


just the same old day

by KilltheRhythm



Category: Football RPF
Genre: High School AU, M/M, Slow Build, Teen drug use, background pierreus, but no actual high schoolers doing it, ok actually a lot of drugs, raph is a complete dumbass in this sorry, references to high schoolers doing it, the high school drug dealers au, title from a homebrew song, unedited but will edit later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 13:21:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11692497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheRhythm/pseuds/KilltheRhythm
Summary: The boys might be in it a little too deep this time.





	just the same old day

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so basically I wanted to write a story based on the ridiculous shit my friends and I have done. Obviously embellished to an extent. I don't sell drugs, nor do I endorse doing them in excess. 
> 
> Also I swear I didn't mean for this to be so long. Whoops.

Felix looks up at the apartments again. He'd been to them a million times, but it was hard to remember which one was Ousmane's and which belonged to the grumpy woman in her eighties that lived next door. Last time he'd guessed wrong and climbed up her balcony, and she'd come out to beat him over the head with a wooden spoon. The memory makes him wince. That wasn't the first time.

He decides that apartment 27, the third from the right on the second floor from where he was standing was Ous's, and began the climb. When he was younger this was a lot scarier, scaling up gutters and clinging to bricks, and he fell off a lot more. He's pretty sure that around half of his childhood photos have a cast around an arm from endless attempts at climbing things. Now with a calculated number of hops and stretches of his arms he makes it up to what he hopes is Ous's apartment.

Felix knocks on the door with the special knock they'd come up with when Ousmane first came into town in middle school. Only half a minute later the door swings open. Ous is there in all of his gangly glory, decked out in a barca jersey and sweatpants.

"Sahhh dude?" they say in unison. Ousmane lets him in after that, eyes still a little puffy from sleeping. Only then did Felix remember the time, ten am on a Sunday. It would've mattered a few years ago, when the Dembele family still made their son go to church, but doesn't anymore. After years of arguing, protesting and the occasional persuasive letter, Ousmane had managed to convince them to make him go only once a month.

The spacious apartment was as neat as ever, and completely devoid of people. Both of Ousmane's parents were at church currently, with his little sister, leaving the two teenagers to themselves. Ousmane bellyflopped onto the couch, lazy smile on his face like it always was.

"You call Emre over?"

Felix shakes his head. He hadn't, partially because he knew how long the bike ride was from Emre's house to Ousmane's apartment complex, and partially because everyone knew that Emre did not wake up before one pm on the weekends. "I didn't bring anything either, before you ask."

The smile morphs into a tiny frown. "Lame," he breaths out, closing his eyes to think. "We need to go to Papa's again anyways."

"What about Götze? I think he's cheaper."

A shake of the head. "I don't trust that fat fuck. He started like a month ago, bro."

Felix, still sitting at the table near the couch, rolled up the plastic bag on the table out of habit. He did this whenever he needed to think better. Papa lived across town, and currently none of them owned a car. But he'd also recently promised the most popular girl at their high school he'd have something for her by Tuesday. "I bet I can get Papa to deliver."

"To my apartment? Felix, I know that your mom doesn't give a shit, but my parents would know. I don't know how they would know, but they would, instantly, and I would die."

Felix laughs, partially because he knew that it was true, that Ousmane's parents, cautious, upperclass and fiercely religious, would instantly know if a sketchy Greek man in his mid twenties pulled up to their apartment, but also because of how ignorant they were to the whole situation. "Let's bike over then, I'll just tell him to come to mine."

Ousmane nods, already looking for his slides. The bike ride was ten minutes, and when they get there, there is the pleasant surprise that Felix's mother was not home. She did this sometimes, leaving without notice. He calls Emre up while Felix calls Papa. Felix would text the Greek man but he knew that Papa's trap phone didn't text. He was old school like that.

Unsurprisingly, Emre doesn't show, still asleep. Reliably, Papa is at the Passlack apartment in less than thirty minutes. The exchange is quick, though he laments their friend's absence in a thick Greek accent. "Where is the last member of three loko?"

They next see the final member of three loko on Monday, at the park for their usual summer pickup soccer game. Emre is currently in his phase where he only wears shirts with Arabic on them, mostly because some of the guys at pick up enjoy making jokes about how he was actually a secret Iraqi terrorist (he unfortunately wasn't). Emre's primary characteristic was not giving a fuck. It is this and his poor sense of time that lead to him being five minutes late to the game that day, though this is actually early by his standards.

Post game, as they all skateboard over to the nearest corner store, Emre makes his announcement. "I have decided that I'm going clean," he pauses to gauge their reactions. "For a month."

Instantly Ousmane and Felix burst into laughter. They all smoked, but Emre did more than either of them by far. Emre was stoned on a daily basis, to the point where his parents assumed that was his personality. The idea of any of them being clean, but especially Emre, was one they couldn't fathom. They were three loko, infamous (not really) skate crew, best friends and up and coming drug dealers. The loko was in their name for a reason.

"That's hilarious," Ous rubbed his eyes. "Are you high right now?"

Emre stamps his foot. They're currently making a small scene in the store, uncontrollable laughter and all. "I'm for real, Ous. I figured I've hurt my body enough over the school year, now it's time to give it a break. Be healthy."

Felix watches as Emre picks out a bag of Takis and a bottle of soda and snorts. Healthy, yeah right. "Okay dumbass, whatever you say."

Emre gives them his best holier than thou face and pats where he thinks his liver is (he's patting more of the lung region unfortunately). "Well my liver is gonna thank me."

Later, as he watches Felix and Ousmane blow smoke rings lazily in a creekbed, and probably getting a secondhand high, he leans onto Ousmane's shoulder and says. "Just so you know I'm all in on this still."

"We didn't think you weren't." Felix says before blowing another O. "We trust you more than Raph."

Everyone grimaces at the mention of their friend Raphaël. Raph was somehow sober less often than they were, and didn't even sell to finance it. Instead he'd hooked up with the daughter of the owner of the state's biggest grocery chain, Bartra's. She was not only unbelievably rich, but also attractive and completely willing to buy Raph whatever, whether that be Xanax or kush. She was also completely disgusting.

The tallest of the three shakes his head. "We aren't four loko for a reason man, he ain't part of the crew."

"I thought it was because we couldn't find a fourth bro."

"Well yeah, that too, but also because I don't trust Raph with selling."

There had been a quest to find the mystical fourth bro and therefore become four loko, like the drink. Raphaël was almost it, but not really, because he always smoked their shit. They'd hung with Matthias for a while, but he didn't go hard enough. The reverse was the issue with Shinji, he went too hard. Now there was the fear that they'd be two loko at parties, because of Emre and his pledge to month long sobriety.

It's summer though, so parties get replaced mostly with swimming and pick up soccer games. Selling isn't an issue though, considering that half of the guys that showed up to pick up bought from them. Aside from them, some of their high school classmates and an assortment of college students also considered three loko as their supplier. Other than the occasional kickback, they mostly stick to their small group, skateboarding and hiking all of the other summertime activities that a teen could dream of.

Ousmane considered it lucky that his parents trusted Felix and Emre. His family was strongly Christian, and very straightedge. They didn't smoke or drink, and assumed that their children abstained equally. Between his prissy little sister and his parents and their high income jobs, he is the black sheep of the family, and that showed in his taste of friends. His parents wouldn't trust Emre or Felix if he hadn't known them since middle school, and certainly wouldn't if they knew what he and his friends got up to.

Felix already conjured up a sense of mistrust as he was not only Jewish, but was raised by a single mom. He had older half siblings, but they'd all graduated years ago. A teenage boy and his ultra liberal Jewish mother living in a tiny apartment on the poorer side of town set off a myriad of alarm bells. The fact that Felix's mother was a professor of Jewish history at the university only worried them more. Ousmane had promised countless times that he would not convert to Judaism.

Even more worrying for them was Emre's family. He lived with not only his parents and three siblings, but with his mother's parents and his other grandmother, who lived in a yurt in their backyard. To top it all off, Emre's family were pagans (traditionalists, the tiny teen insisted). Ousmane's parents lived in fear that these idol worshiping heathens living on a "hippie commune" were going to push their darling son into evil as well.

It only makes sense then, that the next week they go to pick up that they meet the new kid. Christian is easily within their height and age range, and happens to be really good at soccer. He's all the way from the foreign land of Pennsylvania, and has a weird northeastern accent because of it. They have chemistry on the field, every single one of their passes and crosses landing at his feet and vice versa, so Felix does the logical thing and invites him to grab lunch with them afterwords.

Christian is stunned for a moment, and wonders if their offer was legitimate. First he scans Felix's face for a sign of humor, and then the two teens behind him (Oscar and Aaron? Eric and Omar? He can't remember), but finds nothing. This wasn't a joke. It was his second week here, and he'd already found people who seemed to be generally okay with his existence. In all of his days, Christian had never expected it to be this easy.

"Uh sure," he says finally. "Where are we going?"

Felix and the other two (Emerson and Elijah? He was still at a loss) all look at each other like how telepathic twins do in a movie and seem to come to a consensus without words. "Julio's."

"Can you skate?" The taller one asks.

"As in skateboard. Not roller skate." The shorter, non Felix one says.

"Sorta? I don't have one with me right now," Christan says, suddenly feeling self conscious as he stares at the boards in the three teenagers' hands. He wonders what else they deem important. Internally he decides on what parts of himself he make more prominent and which he should hide away. It's normal for him to do this. His friends back in Pennsylvania called it hiding in the closet, but Christian figures that it's better that way. Otherwise straight boys wouldn't want to be friends with him.

After a quick plunge in the pool, they end up walking over to Julio's. The half cafe half texmex restaurant is surprisingly close to the park. Christian hopes that he can one day have this familiarity with the city and these people. It still surprises him how nice they are, happily letting him hang out within their miniature clique even though he was just an awkward white boy.

"I'm new here." He says, like that wasn't obvious after they order. The three boys sitting around the table nod reassuringly.

They all say some version of 'we figured,' though Felix's is the only one he really focuses on. He realizes that he didn't have to say that, that it should've been obvious just from the way he mispronounced quesadilla. Maybe they knew before that, how he introduced himself to them, how he'd never showed up to a pickup game beforehand. He wonders why they'd let him hang out with them, especially with the fact that they all knew each other so well.

But after he pushes past that initial awkwardness everything is smooth sailing. The jokes come up easy and conversation is endless. Christian finds himself laughing more often than not, even though he still can't remember Felix's friends' names.

In fact, the entire interaction is so positive that he ends up getting Felix's number. He knows that the blonde means it in a friendly way, that much is obvious with the 'dude' and 'bro' he attaches to the end of almost every sentence, and he's fine with that. Really, Christian is just glad to talk with people his own age again. Quickly Felix and his friends' names appear in even his texts to friends from back up north. His parents can tell that something good had happened by the time dinner rolls around, sheerly by the fact that Christian can't stop smiling.

In his dreams he goes skateboarding with Felix, through the streets of this new town, with the summer sun shining down through the leaves. The light is green and dappled and the water of the swimming pool they jump into is cerulean and shining like polished crystal. Felix's friends are there, but also not, in the way that dream logic usually follows. It's hazy, and when he wakes up he's already half forgotten it.

There's a text notification on his phone though, and that clears away any thought of the dream. It's from Felix, and it asks him if he's free to hang. Yes yes yes he is. He remembers to bring a skateboard and $20 this time.

They meet at the park, Felix showing up first, then Ousmane, and finally Emre. Their fluffy haired friend is late enough to prompt Ousmsne to complain. "We need to start telling him that we're hanging out earlier than we are so he'll show up on time."

Emre snorts, walking up behind Ousmane and knocking his snapback off of his head. "I'll just be twice as late then. That's how three loko rolls."

Christian raises a brow. "Three loko?"

"Us." Felix says, pointing to himself and then his two friends. Behind him, they start to playfully slap fight. There's a slight laugh in his voice.

Things remain normal until after lunch, after they enter Felix's apartment, whereupon Emre decides to ask Felix how the 'bird situation' was going. This question is hyphenated by a squawk coming from Felix's bedroom.

"Birds?" Christian asks.

"You wanna buy some birds?"

"What?"

Felix, who has thrown himself onto the couch, has the facial expression that he usually has before he begins a long winded story. "Yeah bro, if you want some birds, I got so many canaries. They're like inbred but like please take them. They won't stop having sex, and they like make eye contact with me while they're doing it and it's like I'm in hell."

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"They like beat each other, and they'll bleed-- I think it's bdsm! They scream and its in my dreams now. I'll give them to you for free, I have so many." Felix says, voice having shifted from casual to slightly pleading. Christian no longer wants to go into Felix's room. The story is completely out of left field, but he has a feeling that it gets told every time someone new enters Felix's apartment.

The rest of the hang out session post canary story is gloriously uneventful. They kick around a ball, go swimming and go back to Felix's place to play FIFA, as he happens to live closest to the park. There's other stuff too, but Christian doesn't mention that to his parents when they ask how his day was.

Eventually, he gets added to the three loko groupchat. The three is still in the name, but he figures-- no, hopes that eventually it'll change to four. He doesn't know that they didn't add him to their preexisting groupchat, but made a new one for him.

"When do you think he'll figure it out?" Ousmane says at one of the Christian-less hangouts. Said hangout occurs after a particularly good sale, as they count their money. He's sure that somewhere in the bible it says that this, all that they'd been doing was wrong, but he no longer cares. He's had more pocket money than ever before, more than his "babysitting" could ever make, and his parents were too innocent, too in the dark to think of anything else being the reason for this newfound providence. After all, he'd seen his friends rip pages out of the bible to roll joints with.

Felix shrugs, kicking back further in his chair. "Does it matter? I don't think he'll care."

Emre looks at him, eyes bright. He'd somehow held true to his word, and had been sober for weeks now. "He really likes being around you-- us. He's gonna know at some point."

"That point isn't now."

Ousmane nods. "Felix is right. Let's wait and see if we can trust him. Take him to a few parties and see what happens."

The other two make noises of agreement. Felix shuffles over to the balcony of his apartment, and slides an altoids box out of its hiding place, in a pocket formed at the bottom of a chair that'd seen better days. He pulls a cigarette out and reaches to his pocket for a lighter. Frowning slightly at the neighborhood below them, he lights it. The hedges below his balcony have a hole in them from where he's fallen out of his apartment trying to sneak out during freshman year.

Emre joins him on the balcony, though he doesn't accept the offer to take a drag of the cigarette. Ousmane stays inside because he knows that it'll take at least two washes to get the smell out of this shirt and he doesn't have that kind of time. Emre'd always been able to provide a silent, reassuring type of companionship, and he does that at the moment.

"I don't like lying, or at least about this to him." Felix says finally.

Ousmane may be the eldest of the three (only by a few months) but he isn't the most mature. "Oooh, has the great Felix Passlack gone soft?"

Felix scoffs at him. If anyone in their group was soft, it was Ousmane, who had the richest family and had never gotten into a fight. Felix, on the other hand, had an aggressive streak. "Fuck off man. I just don't want him hearing about what we do from someone else."

Emre nods slowly. "But like you said, we can't trust him yet either. What if he went to the cops and busted our shit? We can be tried as adults now."

Ousmane sighs and shakes his head, walking out onto the balcony. It was cramped, a little too small for three teenage boys, but there's a discussion to be had. "So what y'all are saying is, don't tell him yet, but soon?"

"Yeah."

"And we need to see if we can trust him?" Ousmane asks, though he knows the answer.

"Yes."

"Then what about Roman's party?" The grin splits Ousmane's face like cracking a coconut to reveal bright white underneath.

Christian had been to parties before. Admittedly, they'd been more of kickbacks, and they were back up in Pennsylvania, where he knew everyone in his small town, but they were still parties. Perhaps it's the fact that he's new to town, but the invitation to a superhero themed party sounded a little more adventurous than the ones from back home. Explaining to his parents that he was going to sleep over at a friend's house maybe a month into moving in was the hard part. She was wary, knew how to ask all the right questions and make Christian feel guilty, but caved in eventually. Under the stern gaze of his parents, Christian leaves his home and ventures over to Felix's.

He meets up with the members of three loko all outside of Felix's apartment, and it is quite possibly the first time he'd seen them without their skateboards. Ousmane was dressed like an imitation of Clark Kent, exact down to the glasses. It made Christian's Captain America t shirt feel understated, or at least until he saw Felix's shirt. The blonde had just stenciled the word "avengers" on a t shirt. It would look shitty and half assed on anyone else, but Christian thinks it is hilarious and unique on Felix. Emre is wearing a t shirt with some obscure middle eastern superhero on it. It might or might not have 'death to America' on it in all red capital letters. It's something that only Emre could pull off, or dare pulling off.

"How're we getting there?"

"Uber," Emre explains, wiggling his shitty cracked iPhone. The background is a Colorado weed farm.

Their uber driver is an overly chatty man named Nuri, who apparently has driven Christian's newfound friends before. He's more than a little surprised that they're all sober. Christian wonders how many times they've called up uber after parties, too fucked up to skateboard home. His questions are friendly and unfortunately mostly aimed at Christian himself, as he'd dealt with the others before. It's fine until he starts asking questions about having a girlfriend. Christian can feel the start of a cold sweat coming on.

Thankfully the ride is quicker than expected, dropping them off at a house larger than Emre's or Christian's. The only reason why the sun still lingers near the horizon is because of summer, but they can tell that Roman's place is already buzzing with people. Roman himself comes to meet them at the door. He's intimidatingly attractive, though the first thing that hits Christian is that there is no way this man was in high school. College maybe, but certainly not an eighteen year old or younger.

"Guys! Come on in," Roman says, ushering them into the building. He's wearing a superman t shirt and a frat wristband, confirming suspicions that he was in fact a college student.

"This is Christian," Felix says. Christian waves awkwardly. Roman nods, already turning away to talk to some other people, feeling that he'd done his part at welcoming host.

Immediately the three teenagers head to where they think the alcohol is. The Pennsylvanian follows Felix, just hoping not to get lost. Ousmane and Emre are somewhere nearby, chatting to another guy in their age range. He has a shitty chin beard and looks a little stoned already, brown eyes at half mast. Quickly they shoo him away though, as an angry looking older boy stalks over to them. He isn't in high school either, but looks a little younger than Roman, all tan skin, dark hair and bright eyes.

"You," he says accusingly, pointing a finger at the three teenagers in questions "are friends with him." The finger is now pointing at a person rendered faceless in the sea of people.

"Yeah?" Ousmane says cockily. "We know Raph, yeah."

"That asshole is dating my sister." The guy says, and his identity becomes clear. He's the son of the owner of Bartra's. Marc. "Tell him to get away from her."

"Bruh," Emre says "your little sister's nasty as fuck. He ain't doing anything to her she isn't familiar with."

They trade insults for a few moments until Marc gets pulled away by Roman. The windows of the house show that the sun had lowered at an exponentially increasing pace. Now that nightfall is imminent, Christian's friends' want for alcohol increased. The group split, Felix and Christian hunting around indoors, and Emre and Ousmane going to the backyard, where people were dancing.

Emre is weaving his way through grinding bodies when it catches him. Almost everyone here was a college student, but there was one who stood out. A tall man in a subzero costume stands nearby, holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. Emre didn't particularly like whiskey, but the want to get fucked up outweighed his alcohol preference. In a few strides he has quickly approached Subzero.

"Yo, Subzero!" He yells, and the man turns. Subzero nods, then proceeds to shuffle closer to Emre.

Amazingly, Subzero manages to pour out a decent amount for Emre. He could smell alcohol and something else on the man's breath, but nodded his approval all the same. Emre downs his glass in two goes, then completely slips away from Ousmane, who was caught up talking to someone he only half knew. In mere moments Emre was on the dance floor, in the middle of two people; a young woman in a Wonder Woman outfit and a man in a Hulk t shirt. Ousmane stares at him for a second. Perfect. The gangly teenager felt something jolt through him, though he gulped it down like he did his drink. Suddenly his throat felt dry, thirsty again.

There's no use in trying to pry Emre away from his dance partners, he's grinding against Wonder Woman with all of the intensity a seventeen year old boy could muster. She's got a bottle of grey goose in one hand and a cigarette in the other, though she eventually passes the bottle to Emre, who downs whatever is left in it in record time. Ousmane sighs and decides to join in the dancing. Maybe eventually he'll get to sidle up next to Emre.

Meanwhile, in the depths of the house, Felix has managed to find someone with a volcano vape and take a long hit. Christian follows suit, breathing in from the bag like he would from a helium filled balloon. The high hits him before the alcohol they drink next does. It's a tiny bottle of tequila, but it's strong, and immediately they look to go find other drinks.

Faded and tipsy, it becomes a lot harder to find any alcohol. The bottles seem to be invisible, nonexistent. Eventually Felix gives up and starts drinking from cups that are unattended. Christian begrudgingly follows suit. The first one Felix picks up is full of some purple liquid.

"Bro, what kind of alcohol you think this is?" Felix asks.

The weed has really hit Christian at this point, so it is a struggle to force out a "Nooooo," which is all he can really manage to say.

Felix downs it before he can think, and then moments later his face screws up, like it's all just hitting him. He stares at the empty styrofoam cup. It tasted sweet, almost like cough syrup. "Fuck."

"What?"

"That was lean," Felix says, moving forward. There's a bottle of svedka only meters ahead that can clear this taste out of his mouth. A tiny David Attenborough esque voice in his head says _Finally, I've found the source_.

Fast forward an hour later and Felix and Christian are absolutely obliterated. They were too crossfaded to bother noticing the sirens. Meanwhile, Ousmane had found someone who was selling acid. He hadn't done acid before, but he felt like it would be fun, especially considering how drunk he already was. The LSD had him energetic, like he could run millions of miles, which was good considering that he bolted when he heard the cops.

Half sprinting, half stumbling, he runs away from the sirens into residential neighborhood, until he realizes something. "Oh god, the guys aren't here," he wails, coming to a complete halt.

For a moment he contemplates this. He's scared of the cops being there and getting arrested for drugs, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem right. He has to get them back. Time for some serious bravery.

"Homies don't leave homies behind, Ous." He tells himself.

With that, he heads back over to the party, where the siren sounds have blessedly left. Ousmane's mind is still stuck on Emre. He's not sober enough to process his emotions, but he knows that he didn't like that Emre didn't dance with him. Still, he plows on. Luckily, there is no one of authority lingering around the premises by the time he gets there.

Things had only heated up more upon his arrival. The cops had done absolutely nothing to take down the party, the house reeked completely of weed and cheap liquor. Someone was doing cocaine in the front room. Smoke floated heavy in the air, and the people had become indistinguishable, though that may have partially been to do with how far gone he was. The first person who he goes to look for is obvious; Emre, who is still trying to get with Wonder Woman, who herself at this point was making out with a girl dressed as Spider-Man.

"Emreeee," Ousmane drags out sadly. "Give up. She's a lesbian."

Emre pouts, but cheers up with Felix stumbles over to them (Christian in tow) with a half full bottle of Tito's, only to drag them inside. The four of them split it, having seemingly forgotten all about the cops. Eventually the house gets to be too much, so they shuffle out to the backyard.

Everyone in the backyard has made a circle. Originally they assumed that it was a dance circle, but no one was visible in the center. As Emre pushed forward into it, leading the way for his three friends, he realized what was going on. Subzero was lying on the floor, holding a now mostly empty bottle of jack. He twitched a little, moving in the grass. If Subzero was trying to speak it was a poor attempt, as he could only make weird half syllables. He feared that his new friend, no, this godlike figure had succumbed to alcohol poisoning.

"Subzero," he wailed, dropping to his knees. "Subzero, bro, pour me one out."

Unfortunately, Subzero was a little too far gone for this. He said something incoherently, and Emre stood up, shaking his head sadly. Christian, too crossfaded (triple crossed? Had he drunk lean that night? He didn't have words for what he was on at the moment) to understand completely what was going on, nodded and said "Rest in Peace Subzero."

The people around him clapped mournfully. Christian felt like a hero until he got pulled away. The other members of three loko had been talking while he'd been apparently staring into space, and told him that they'd decided that they'd walk to Wendy's before they went home. He couldn't tell how long everything was taking or took. Christian nods, mostly because he can't do much else. He's too fucked to be hungry, but still, he plods along in the walk to Wendy's.

Their first Wendy's attempt is just them trying to walk through the drive through, and the poor person over the intercom trying to tell them that no, you cannot order here. Unhappily, they entered Wendy's.

Inside, they are greeted not only by unenthusiastic fast food workers who do not want to be working at this hour, but also by some people from the party. One of them he can identify as Raph, the girl is certainly his girlfriend and the other two boys he doesn't have a clue about. The first one is blonde and wearing a supreme jacket, even though it was too hot outside to wear it comfortably. The other is an Asian dude with semi red hair and a rainbow snapback.

"Raph, Raph's girlfriend (Liz), Sven and Shinji," they're introduced as, and then less helpfully added "Sven has a trap house."

They sit down at the table with the three other high schoolers, and only then did Christian realize he had a milkshake. He hadn't remembered ordering it, but he must have at some point. Time and consciousness weren't real. Felix squeezes him into the booth, sitting next to him. Emre and Ous join them in that order.

"We're gonna go to Sven's soon." Raph says, rather unhelpfully. His girlfriend nodded. "If you wanna come with."

Felix raises a brow. "Why?"

The smile never leaves Shinji's face. "We're buying."

Ousmane narrows his eyes at them. He's not supposed to blow their cover, something he can amazingly remember somehow. Nothing else seemed clear to him, head filled with inescapable fog. Felix, on the other hand, cannot resist calling him out. "Bro why? You said you'd buy from us."

"I don't buy from my friends." Raph says, shaking his head. Liz nods again. She'll probably be the one financing the whole thing.

"Yeah, but you'd take from us without a problem," Felix snaps back.

The argument that takes place for the next few minutes is completely incoherent as no one is anywhere near sober. Christian is vaguely aware of some of the more awake Wendy's employees videotaping them on their phones. This will probably be all on Twitter. He's also aware of the fact that Felix mentioned that they sold, but he does not have the brain capacity to process that fact.

"Who's driving?" Emre pipes up after the squabble ends.

"Shinji." Sven says. From his voice alone it's obvious that he's drunk, stoned or both.

"Yeah, I'm out." Ousmane said suddenly, especially considering that he was never really part of the conversation, on his phone for parts of it. He stands up, incredibly wobbly, and begins to make his way to the door. Moments ago he'd hit up uber, and he'd just got the message that his ride was here.

It takes him at least two minutes to get to the car, though it felt like only seconds for him. The uber driver looks suspiciously like his literature teacher Mr Aubameyang, but he decides that the driver isn't as his car was way too cool to be a high school teacher's. The seats were covered in a fluffy tiger print material that he stroked endlessly. The outside was nice too, a polished gold color. Instantly Ousmsne had car envy.

"Man," he finally says, hands still running over the seats. "your car is like a tiger. A intergalactic car tiger"

The driver looks confused, and then alarmed. "Uh, sure."

The driver glanced at him with a great deal of concern occasionally through the mirror. In reality it was his teacher Aubameyang, who had decided to make some extra uber money while his fiancée was out of town. Oh what I'll tell Marco when he gets back, he thought, because Marco had taught Ousmane Geography the year before and the entire interaction was surreal. Conversation was carried out in snippets, and the topic was constantly changing. The high school student made no sense. Auba wondered exactly what kind of drugs the kid was on. Worriedly, he drops Ousmane off at the address the teenager had requested and hopes that the teen gets home safely.

In really, Ousmane had given him and address two blocks from his place. He stood for a moment, staring at an apartment complex that was not his own. Possibly, Ousmane knew where he was. Confusion flooded his brain for a moment. He was still hungry. There was a cafe nearby. Obviously, he should walk over to said cafe. He manages to make it there with minimal difficulty, though the cashier gave him a weird look. Halfway through his order, the girl at the front stopped him.

"Sorry sir, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're not making much sense and you've been trying to order for five minutes." She says as politely as possible, ushering him away.

Sad because he never got his coffee, Ousmane walked most of the way home before collapsing into the largest bush in his apartment lot. It swallowed him up, and he quickly passed out.

Meanwhile, Christian was having the time of his life sitting in the bed of Shinji's truck. Shinji didn't have a license, was half baked and was currently going at least twenty five minutes over the speed limit, but he didn't care. It was great fun to let the wind blow through his hair and listen to Felix crack stupid jokes. It seems like no time before they get to the trap house.

He has no memory of what the house looks like sans the fact that Sven's mom was there and made him a plate of eggs. She apparently helps Sven trap, which he drunkenly considered considerate after he was told Sven's backstory. Sven had moved to America with his mom, dad and twin brother, Lars, when they were five, but his parents had gotten into a nasty divorce and his dad took his twin back to Germany. This was probably a good thing, as they looked down on Sven's "lifestyle." Sven hadn't talked to either of them in years.

After Shinji cops his weed, he says he wants to go joyriding. He, Sven, Raph and Sven's mom all hop into the truck and get ready to go. Christian cannot remember why he and Felix aren't going with them, and Felix can't remember either. It's sudden. Sudden enough to make Emre realize it a minute too late, get up, bolt out of the house and chase down the truck like the terminator screaming "wait!"

This leaves Christian and Felix alone in the trap house. That fact by itself would be enough to scare the crap out of two of them even if they weren't incredibly crossfaded, so they try to book it too. There are bikes outside of the house but both teenagers know that they are in no condition to ride them. They try anyways, falling every few feet. Each plummet to the earth makes them drowsier, and quickly Christian realizes that they'll never make it home.

Felix and Christian end up passing out in front of a church. Waking up is painful and confusing and nothing that Christian wants to do, but he forces himself to with shaky limbs. They must've only slept for a few hours as the sun is still low in the sky. Felix's phone tells them that it is 7:46 AM and that he has fifty eight unread messages (half of them being misspellings of the word 'cunt' from Emre) and nine missed calls (four from Ous, one from Emre, one from Raph and one from a random number).

"I feel like shit." Christian moans.

"You look like shit," Felix says. Felix's face is in no better condition than Christian's.

By some form of general consensus they decide to get up and go find breakfast. This is when Christian realizes just how bad he feels. His head hurts, his back hurts, his legs hurt. The entirety of his body aches, even his teeth. This is the worst hangover of his life. He feels simultaneously starving and nauseous.

Felix calls Emre first as they drag themselves towards the nearest cafe or cheap food outlet. Amazingly, Emre picks up after the second ring, and his voice sounds a lot less raspy than Felix's. Maybe it was because he was the only one in their group that didn't smoke that night.

Emre meets up with him at their local donut shop. None of them particularly like donuts, but Felix and Christian couldn't be bothered to walk any further. Ousmane does not make an appearance as he didn't pick up his phone. All three of them had tried calling him on multiple occasions, but to no avail; he never picked up.

Christian gingerly bites into a donut. It feels like that if he applies any considerable amount of force with his jaw the bones will shatter and his teeth will come tumbling out. Felix seems to be the same way. Emre, on the other hand, is sipping the shitty coffee he bought there and happily chomping down on his second donut.

"Fuuuuck," Felix moans, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "How are you even alive?"

He has a point. Emre is almost obnoxiously happy. No hangover, no cotton mouth, no bad vibes. He is basking in his own internal ray of sunshine while Christian melts into Felix like a sad, sappy puddle. Not that that was a bad thing, Felix was comfortable and Christian would be happy to lean on him any hour of the day or day of the week. At least he had the blonde to feel shitty with him.

Emre, eyes still glittering, responds brightly. "Oh, it's simple. You just drink this tincture made with revitalizing herbs and spices, combined with the roots of plants that have reenergizing properties and lots of antioxidants. I think it has goji berries in it. My grandma makes it and it works like a charm!"

"Your grandma lives in a yurt," Felix says, like that is an insult or something said to discredit her.

"And I don't feel like Satan's asshole, unlike some of us," Emre snaps back, teeth shining like pearls. Felix looks like he wants to hurl his donut into the blue eyed teenager's face.

"Joke's on you, I feel great," Christian tries to say. Unfortunately, his words come out as more of a croak. It feels like his vocal cords are trying to mutiny.

There is a pause, and then laughter. Felix shakes his head, then regrets it when a new wave of nausea follows his horrible headache, and Emre bounces in his seat like a hyperactive toddler. Their other bro is still nowhere to be seen. Emre wonders where he could be. Panic slowly trickles into his brain. Was he hurt? Did he die? Could he somehow have managed to leave town, and be kidnapped, or worse? He could've been eaten by werewolves for all that Emre knew.

"Guys, we need to find Ousmane." He finally says. Fear is in his voice now.

"Emre, he's probably asleep at home." Christian says lazily.

Felix nods slowly, pointing to Christian. "What he said."

Emre stares at them. This was like an act of treachery. To abandon a bro in a time of need was unheard of, and Emre was pretty sure that this was, in fact, a time of need. "And he didn't pick up his phone?"

"Did you see how drunk he was? And the acid? He's probably still passed out."

Emre gasps. "Ousmane is a light sleeper, Felix. This isn't right. We need to find him!"

Christian stares at Emre for a few moments. "You sure you're still not high?"

Unfortunately, an energetic Emre can break down the resolves of the most resilient, let alone two very hungover seventeen year old boys. They are at Ousmane's apartment complex as soon as possible. It's a nice one, so they have to hop a few fences to get in in the first place. With every ascent and plummet, Christian feels like he is going to vomit. He almost regrets last night's decisions, but can't. Not when he could finally say he had the definitive teen experience.

There is a sizable, mostly Ousmane shaped hole in the bushes near Ousmane's apartment. Emre gasps and runs towards it, though Felix has seen this sight more than once. He slowly walks after his equally short friend, Christian in tow behind.

Ousmane is not in the hole, but there are a few leaves from the bush staggered on the staircase and walkway, so Emre can rest assured that his friend had survived. His heart reassured, he turns to begin the walk back out of the building's yard when a tall African woman appears in front of him.

"Jesus is lord!" She exclaims in a half African half French accent. "You scared me. What are you doing here? I thought you were some filthy intruders."

Felix stares at the woman, who has narrowed her eyes at him. She liked neither Emre nor Felix, but took a specially strong disliking to the blonde. Emre's parents were confused heathens in her eyes, but a Jew, who understood god yet still chose to reject Jesus was a whole new breed of horrible. It didn't help that was Felix was raised by a single (lesbian) mother or that he had a quip for everything. Clearly he was a demon sent from the fiery pits below to ruin her son.

"Oh, no. We were just looking for Ous," Emre chirps before Felix can say anything to make the situation worse.

"Ousmsne had a late night working with the other boys in his church group. I think he's still asleep." She says. It takes a large effort to not laugh at how wrong she is. Ousmane was always a fantastical liar. It's obvious that she wants them gone though, so relieved by her news, they leave the apartments.

Meanwhile, Ousmane shuddered in his room. Acid was certainly a mistake, as he was currently having the worst trip of his life. Words didn't, couldn't describe his feelings. Everything felt off, and evil presences lurked behind every wall, underneath the floor and hidden in the furniture. The entire world was altered for the worst, and if he were to leave his room he was sure that he would die.

Meanwhile, Christian heads back homewards at noon that day, now looking a little less run over and far more acceptable. He comes home, answers his parents' questions with cute little lies like spending all night dueling it out in board games at Felix's with his new friends and playing some evening soccer. His parents think he'd had a wholesome night of fun, and Christian flops into his bed to start playing FIFA.

He's halfway through his first game when it hits him. Felix, Ousmane and Emre are drug dealers. He is friends with drug dealers. Instantly he loses focus of the game and his head swims. How hadn't he put the pieces together earlier? The sketchy phone calls, comfortable supplies of money, Felix angrily snapping at Raph for buying from Sven.

Now it really dawns on him. That's why they were still three loko. Christian was their friend, but he wasn't a member because he didn't sell. With this understanding comes a new array of questions to fill his mind. When did they plan on telling him? Why didn't they earlier? Did they plan on adding him to the group? Was he even really their friend? Were they dangerous and would it ruin his life? When he started going to school, would it keep him from making other friends?

Instantly he is filled with the desire to call Felix, to hear his opinion. Better yet would be to talk to him in person, but he knows that that's reaching. He hesitates going for his phone though. There was a possibility that Felix was selling right now. That calling him wouldn't be okay because Felix was texting someone who was interested in buying. That maybe Felix wanted him to be a customer more than a friend. Somehow, he didn't even think about Ousmane and Emre. They mattered less. It was mean, but true.

Then a new possibility entered his head: maybe Felix wanted him to join. Christian wasn't sure what the term was for what Felix might want him to join though. Ring, cartel, group, posse, crew were all possibilities. It made Christian feel dorky. The only things he knew about drug dealing were from health classes and the tv show Narcos. He was pretty sure that Emre, Ous and Felix were not like Escobar.

Now it felt more important to call, but Christian still couldn't bring himself to do so. Too risky. So he obviously decides to do the opposite: never bring it up. It's only until late, late July that the thought comes to mind again, and by then he's even closer with them. Now it seems awkward to ask, when he knows his friends well. He knows how many times Felix has broken his bones, that Ousmane was allergic to mosquito spray and that one time Emre ate only olives for two days to win three dollars and fifty cents in a bet.

He decides that it is a better idea to let his friends bring it up, and eventually they do. It's a bit like having the talk, except they're all hotboxing Emre's mom's VW van. Smoking with his friends was a common occurrence, and his use of illicit substances had surely skyrocketed since meeting his friends. Being stoned certainly helps lessen the awkwardness. He isn't scared he'll say something stupid or accidentally put himself when he's high. The swirling smoke keeps any eye contact from being too direct, and the yowling of whatever pow wow music CDs that plays in Emre's mom's van lessens the tension by being over the top ridiculous.

"So, uh, we sell drugs." Emre says, all matter of fact, but still somehow awkward.

Felix clears his throat and adds "Not like meth or that krokodil shit... but drugs."

"I know."

Ousmane cackles. He sounds a little like his dad when he does this. "Told you! Y'all ain't subtle."

"Bitch, you part of this too."

Christian watches as a mini slap fight breaks out. This was normal, considering that his friends were rising seniors with the maturity level of kindergarteners. Felix laughs with him, eyes half crescents. Christian leans into him like he usually does. This was great. Temporarily he forgot the entire situation with the warmth and the mellow high.

"So does this mean that I'm part of the crew?"

Felix's stare is blank. His eyes search for Emre and Ousmane's. "I, uh, yeah? If you want, I mean. We trust you."

Christian's face lights up. He doesn't really care about the whole selling drugs thing, but trust, that was something special. It blinds him a little, the head rush of acceptance, to the point of where he doesn't think about the decisions he's making. Drug dealing was totally worth it if it ensured friendship, no, brotherhood. "Sure." He accepts.

The thing was, being a part of their clique wasn't really any different from before except for the fact that their name gets changed from three loko to four loko now, which totally sounds better. In addition to that, suddenly he has a steady supply of money and the password to the four loko snapchat (but Emre is the only one who really uses it. Emre posts near exclusively dumb or ridiculous shit, but it seems to work, even though using sponge bob puns to sell your product seems a little counterproductive).

Other small changes are getting to meet suppliers, like Papa. He'd figured that Papa was their dealer before he had known about the whole situation, but it actually turns out that the Greek man fucking grows the plants. His family owns a massive farm that mostly cultivates legal crops, but he uses a few of the green houses for the more controversial plants. He's by far the friendliest out of all of the people he's met through his friends. Papa is sure to wave at him whenever Christian and his mother walk through his family farm's stand in the farmer's market. It is surreal.

There are a few other growers they occasionally buy from, but Sokratis is by far their most preferred and the only one Christian really sees. For other drugs, like molly and shrooms, they use the deep web. Ousmane handles that, because he's got the best laptop and actually understands computers. Christian's happy with that, because that type of stuff has always scared him.

By far the strangest though was the man Felix went to to get xanax. There were plenty of characters in Felix's apartment complex, but quite possibly the strangest was Mr Weidenfeller.

Mr Weidenfeller was a tall, serious looking man who was actually not very serious. He'd been a soldier, possibly high ranking (the stories changed every time slightly), and was sent home after many years in Iraq (or Iran, or Afghanistan maybe, his tales were convoluted and they were bad listeners) after losing one of his feet. He returned to the states with a nifty prosthetic foot and a prescription for xanax. He seemed remarkably unaffected by this loss of appendage, and claimed he had no need for the prescription. He'd offered it to Felix once, and had supplied him ever since. The Xanax came free to Mr Weidenfeller, and therefore was incredibly cheap to purchase. Christian enjoyed going because he liked to hear the older man's stories (and maybe because of Felix, but he didn't like to admit that bit).

Selling was sketchier. It felt weird to be on the other side of the deal, and he didn't do it that often. Usually he helped count shit or keep track of what they had, how much they had and what they made. Christian has a knack for math that none of the other have, not even Felix, who is a candidate for valedictorian. They all hope he gets it just to find out what kind of dumb antics he'd pull during his speech. Christian is a little glad that Felix hates math (and actually school in general), because math gets to be his thing, his way to contribute.

It feels great to belong, and it makes the whole experience near unbelievable. He never expected moving away from home to be this easy. Of course, he also never imagined to be perched in the shotgun seat of one of Emre's parents' cars counting twenties after a troop of sorority girls purchased enough molly to keep an entire city block rolling for the night. Selling came with a thrill. The adrenaline rush always followed after the people left and the immensity of the situation fell on Christian and his friends, sitting there with less drugs and more money. It was enough to make him forget how dangerous it all could be.

Emre enjoyed contemplating if they should get a trap house like Sven. They'd thought about it, but it never seemed like something they'd do. Maybe they had the business to do it, but it made the lifestyle seem inescapable, and none of them could see themselves doing this forever. That was part of it; everyone knew that this was only a stage in their lives, that they'd move past this, and it made what they did seem a lot more appealing.

Of course, absolutely none of this stops any of the four seventeen year olds from hastily agreeing to help sell at a massive party that Sven was throwing. Parties were a great way to advertise, but Sven couldn't host one of this magnitude without help from others. No one could anticipate the size of it, he claims, and he might even ask other dealers to join in. It's publicity, they all agree as Ousmane loads up a garbage bag of weed into Emre's mom's ever present VW van. Emre is the only one with a license, so he gets to sit in the cushy air conditioned front while Felix, Ous and Christian pack in the stuff.

"What kind of event are you going to?" Papa asks, impressedly whistling at how much weed they'd bought from him. A garbage bag and a half weren't exact metric amounts, but they were worth a lot of money.

"A big one," Felix says, which didn't even need to be said considering the immensity of what they had just put in the car.

Papa rolls his eyes. "Care to invite a friend?"

Ous laughs, and hands Papa a copy. By now the list of people attending or planning to attend had to be past the hundreds. Their city was by no means small, and word spread quickly. Felix was sure that Raph, Raph'a girlfriend, her brother Marc (who hated all of them strongly), and Marc's new boyfriend Roman (who was not only a sudden addition to Marc's circle, but also was already friends with them) would all be there and would all ask for free weed at least once. He's sure to bring molly and xans to sell too, because the profit was really going to be limitless.

The night rolls around before any of them can expect it. Again, Christian tells his parents that he's sleeping over at Felix's and Ousmsne comes up with some fantastical lie to placate his family, and they all go to the party. He doesn't even take the time to wonder if his parents have a clue as to what he's been getting into as everything is business as usual. Except this time, Emre drives them-- still in the trusty VW-- and with all of their goods in tow.

"How are you gonna get it back?" Christian asks.

Emre half scoffs, half laughs. "I'm a great driver when I'm high, don't worry. I'm only smoking tonight, boys!"

Christian stares at him horrified, but Ousmane gives the short boy a fond look. There's not a doubt in his (probably equally gangly) heart that Emre can get them home safely regardless of sobriety. He'd always trusted Emre, though generally that oftentimes proved to not be a good idea, and Emre reciprocated that with equal levels of trust.

Felix squeezes Christian's hand reassuringly. "Don't worry, he is."

Christian can feel his heart drum up faster, but blames it on the anticipation of tonight. Of course a huge party would make him feel like this. He'd imagined it for the past few days: people everywhere, pretty girls, loud music, Felix. Felix was at the center of seemingly every party, whether that be a high school or college one.

This one is larger than what his imagination would allow him to picture. Sven's trap house was in no way small, and could only be described as large and spacious, but it was crammed with people. Such was the density of these crowds that their entire supply is gone in an hour and a half. Now much, much richer, they bounce to go enjoy the rest of their night. Felix heads straight for the alcohol and Christian gladly follows. They pop champagne to celebrate, though when the two go look for Ousmane and Emre, they're nowhere to be found. Unable to find them, they split the sparkling drink and down it in record time. Christian has never been a fan of champagne, but it feels like a night to celebrate.

There are more drinks after that, but they all blur into a haze along with everything else he takes as Christian nears a black out point. He never reaches it though, doesn't want to. He enjoys the feeling of Felix's arm around his side too much to want to forget. It's electricity coursing through him completely, lighting up his nervous system, like Felix is the source of all energy on earth. Molly is great, he decides, because the mdma makes everything feel velvety smooth and incredibly reassuring. This very well could be the happiest moment of his life.

Emre and Ousmane stumble down to meet them thirty minutes later, both a little buzzed but nowhere near as blasted as Christian or Felix. If they were anywhere near a normal mental state maybe they would've noticed that Ousmane's shirt was misbuttoned and that Emre's fly was mostly down, but they were in no condition to do so. Ousmane and Emre's eyes meet for a moment, and they laugh in the way that two sharing a secret do.

At some point in the night, Raph (amazingly without his ever present girlfriend) brings them up to one of the bedrooms in the house to smoke. In traditional trap house fashion, the bedroom literally only had a bed (actually a step above many trap houses Raph is quick to remind), one a little too small for all five of them, especially with Felix and Christian more sprawled out than they should've been.

Emre and Ousmane are the most sober people in the room for once, and finally realize what a colossal dumbass Raph is. In the three years they've known him, they've never seen him sober, and this is no exception. He is more tolerable sans girlfriend, though she constantly gets brought up.

"Are you still dating that bitch?" Felix slurs slightly.

This should offend Raph. It doesn't. "Yuh dude."

There is an effect that Raph has on people that seems to make them infinitely more dumb. Being in small, confined spaces with him increases this. There had been many a car ride full of conversation with around only three (constantly repeated) words "yuh," "nah," and "dude." Ousmane and Emre are currently fighting that. "Why is she even dating you?"

"Because she thinks he's hot, Ous."

Raph nods. "Fat yuh, bro. She bought me xans."

Come to think of it, Raph was almost certainly already barred out. Ousmane shakes his head. "There's gotta be another reason... Didn't you have that dog?"

Emre looks a little worried for once. "Ous, do we have to go down this path? Not a good idea."

"Doesn't she wanna fuck your dog or something?" Felix says. Christian giggles into Felix's side. Emre facepalms. Raph's girlfriend had a strange fascination with his dog, and may have actually been into bestiality (or so they'd heard). Their less sober friend had mentioned something once that sounded quite a bit like her giving the dog a handy.

Raph frowns. "No dude, we haven't fucked my dog yet."

"Yet?!" Emre shrieks.

"We?!" Ousmane yells at the same time.

Christian finally pops up. "That's gross."

They quickly leave Raph after that. The rest of the party is a bit of a blur. Christian does shots with a man in a panda costume. Ousmane does a keg stand. A girl with braces offers to blow Felix. Emre abstains from drinking. At some point they might've gone downtown. Maybe. Christian can't remember much after the panda shots.

The next morning he wakes up curled up next to Felix in Felix's bed. Their legs are tangled up, and he's wearing Felix's pajama pants, albeit backwards. Felix is shirtless and in his boxers, still sound asleep pressed into his side. Surprisingly his hangover is minimal, and he actually enjoys the time spent relaxing in Felix's bed while waiting for his friend to wake up. The antsy feeling of oncoming danger; that he would be found out somehow, is lacking.

He's glad that he didn't have any embarrassing dreams while he was in Felix's bed. Those had happened plenty of times, but not recently. Come to think of it, he hadn't had any dreams in a long while. He wondered if it was a side effect of the amount drugs he'd been doing in the past two months. Weed certainly had played a role in it.

Eventually Felix does wake up, eyes almost closed and face scrunched up in a smile. Christian's heart might skip a beat. Felix has slight morning breath and his hair is messy beyond belief, but it's probably the best morning ever after a party. Christian could wake up to this every day (a scary feeling that he gulps down with the next breath of air). Felix looks at Christian, and then looks past him to see a party hat on the nightstand.

"I can't believe you saved that party hat." He scoffs.

Christian turns to see the hat. "I did? When did that happen?"

Felix laughs quietly, melodically. "From when we went downtown."

"What? We did?"

Laughter. "We crashed someone's twenty first birthday party. You took a hat."

A later review of his and his friends' snapchat stories shows Christian living it up at someone's party. The guys he high fives and drank with were all in college, and almost all of them were Polish. Ousmane got their numbers and had already managed to sell some molly to them, once again proving that he was ready for life as a business man.

The night fades away from memory mostly. Felix only remembers it when the Polish guys come by to buy. It's inconsequential until they head downtown a few weeks later, in early August. Enjoying an afternoon out and about amongst themselves, the four teens are confronted in a record shop.

"Motherfucker." A blonde man said in a slight Eastern European accent. Felix whips around, already ready to bitchslap the guy, Christian trailing behind to keep him from doing it. Ousmane scratches the back of his head. This guy seemed familiar.

"Can I help you?" Ousmane says, using his I'm An Adult voice.

Emre frowns. The guys seemed familiar, not just from some one time party, but from somewhere else. Finally, it clicks in his head. He'd bought weed from this guy a few times before he started selling. He doesn't get his chance to make peace before the man talks again.

"Yes! You motherfuckers crashed my brother's party and gave my friend laced shit. He was sick for a week! Not only that, but you were selling on my land."

Felix rolls his eyes. "Bro, this ain't no gang shit. Fuck out of here with this territory talk."

Christian looks on worriedly. He'd seen enough gang movies to know that this is the time where someone would get shot. He puts a hand on Felix's shoulder, like that would stop him from hypothetical violence. It does nothing though, as both the stocky teen and the angular man seem to square up.

It happened in a split second. Felix pulls an arm back to swing into a punch, but the polish man is a step ahead. He pushes a knife blade up against Felix's throat, not hard enough to draw blood, but certainly enough to dent the skin.

He wondered what to do. Christian was a pacifist, and instantly began to fret on how to keep the two from fighting. Somehow, Emre manages to stop this before a plan can form in Christian's mind. "Łukasz?"

The man in question's face instantly softens, but the blade remains against Felix's (now slightly trembling) throat. "Woah, Emre?"

"Yeah dude!" Emre chirrups, and then adds a moment later, like an afterthought "Please don't kill Felix."

Ousmane watches on curiously as his best friend converses with this angry polish stranger. It was strange to say the least, but Emre had a talent at diffusing situations.

"Look, I'm chill with you and all, but your friends, they walked onto my land and gave my guys laced shit. Not cool." Łukasz finally says to Emre. The knife is still nestled near Felix's jugular.

The shorter blonde gets the feeling that this guy was in some kind of gang. However, he wouldn't let this stop him from dismissing wrongful criticisms. "We didn't sell laced shit. Our mdma's fucking fire."

"Not a good idea, Felix!" Ousmane warns. Christian nods, considering that his friend could still get a hole in his throat.

"He's right. It's not laced. Maybe your guys took some other stuff, but some of them have come back to us. I think that proves that it's clean." Emre says in a desperate attempt at keeping a murder from happening before their eyes.

Łukasz is quiet for a long while, contemplating what Emre had said. Christian hoped that meant he wasn't going to beat the shit out of Felix, or any of his friends for that matter. Finally, the young man spoke to them. "Okay. I still don't like it, but okay. Just don't bother fucking around my part of town any time soon, alright?"

Slowly he pulls the blade away from Felix's neck, the white line from where he pressed evident in the golden tan of Felix's skin. He keeps eye contact as he begins to leave. Christian's heart races. There was real danger there. When he gets home that night, it takes an impressive amount of energy to not have a full on panic attack. The man had a knife. He was going to kill Felix. He could've killed, or at least hurt the rest of them. The law wouldn't help them. Christian had never been in a situation like that before, though he had no doubt that his friends had. It prompted a whole new evaluation of his life. Was this okay? Had he gone too far? Should he call it quits now?

He was part of a fucking teenage drug dealing ring. His new best friends sold people a plethora of illicit substances. They smoked weed on a near daily basis. Christian's liver had probably taken more damage in his two months in this new city than in all of his previous years combined. All of his friends' friends were borderline addicts. Was this what he wanted in his life?

He wondered if Felix and the others felt that way. Maybe they did at some point. Or maybe they didn't care, were immune to these feelings. Felix sure seemed like it. Truth be told, Felix had cared at some point. He isn't exactly sure why he doesn't any more, but perhaps worrying about danger just naturally faded after being put in risky situation after risky situation. Surely that was what had led his moral compass astray. He's not sure why Christian doesn't seem to care, because if he was in the Pennsylvanian's shoes, he sure would. Yet Christian seemed to endlessly admire him.

As for Emre, he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. Yeah, selling illegal substances was, well, illegal, but that didn't make it bad. Illegal immigrants went against the law, but they weren't bad, or so his logic dictated. Drugs made people feel good, so why were they necessarily bad (especially weed, who's worst side effect was getting the munchies)?

For Ousmane, he saw it as a marketing opportunity more than a moral dilemma. People were going to smoke weed and pop pills regardless of what he did, so why not make a quick buck off of it? It was impossible to keep teens from doing drugs if they wanted to do them, so therefore it couldn't even really be his fault. He was merely facilitating nature.

Perhaps it was the combination of those three's moral faults and pitfalls that made everything happen. No one had really questioned it when they started selling, it seemed to be the natural progression of their friendship. It started with being the middle men for their dealers, then selling weed, and then xanax and molly and now occasionally other things. Only Felix dared to even try to sell coke, and that had only happened once. Nothing harder than that had even been discussed, like that was some moral event horizon that they danced around.

Christian wondered if he'd triggered something, because he'd never thought he'd hear Ousmane and Emre argue over ethics. He sits on Emre's bed next to Felix and watches as their two friends pace about, arguing. Felix looks at him for a moment, making some mental assessment.

"Don't bother intervening."

Christian raises a brow at his blonde friend. "Why?"

Felix looks at him like he should know why. "This happens whenever Emre's stressed."

"Stressed? Why?" He stares at Felix. Felix is used to it by now.

Felix leans over to explain everything to Christian, and Christian can feel his voice in his ear, that is how close he seems. This should bother me, he thinks, but as hard as he tries, it just does not bother him. That doesn't change that he can't focus on what Felix is saying.

Therefore he is the one completely out of the loop as they pre game for what turns out to be Emre's cousin's half birthday bash half hippie coming of age ceremony. Everyone smokes a bowl, and at this point Christian realizes how much better he's gotten at grinding his weed. It's all standard stuff, getting stoned as quickly as possible before an event, something Christian has gotten a little too used to.

That is, until Emre pulls out another baggie with something a little different in it. Christian doesn't think he's ever seen shrooms up this close, but is pretty sure that what is in the bag is shrooms. Gauging by Felix and Ousmane's reactions, it certainly is.

"You're fucking crazy." Felix tells him.

"I'm not doing it," Ousmsne says before adding "your cousin is turning thirteen!"

Emre frowns, opening the bag. "Fuck you guys, I got seven grams of this shit."

Feeling a little more talkative, Christian channels his inner Felix, smiles and says "Have fun eating it by yourself."

A little over an hour later, Emre begins to complain. He regrets eating all seven grams of the shrooms. There are faces on the walls, faces morphing into other faces and morphing back into what they once were again. He continuously bitches about this to them; whiny, but too quiet for any adult to pick it up until Ousmane decides that it is best to usher him away. They disappear for what seems like forever to Christian.

Now he's stoned and alone with Felix at a party for a thirteen year old Turkish girl that he's never met, surrounded by elderly polytheists. There was no point in his life that he thought this was going to happen. Felix is equally faded, but infinitely more giggly as he tries to find a way out of their situation.

Eventually they stumble out to the back porch, still really high. This seems to constitute much of his life for the past few months: mostly spent stoned and with Felix. His blonde friend is both all too close and not close enough. He can feel heat radiate off of him like a lamp or stovetop coil, though heat comes from everywhere due to the oppressive summer sun. The singing of Emre's family is faint in the background, and the steady beat of their drum mixed with the muggy warmth and thc in his blood have Christian drifting off to sleep, or at least half sleep, as he can register his head settling first on Felix's shoulder, and then his lap. Every point of contact is electrifying and exciting and a multitude of other adjectives he'd learned to associate with this, whatever this is, in the romance novels he'd secretly stolen and read from his mother's bookshelf.

So it is no surprise that there, stoned, half asleep and head in Felix's lap, Christian comes to a startling conclusion: he'd been harboring a crush. He's glad that he realizes it now, because he's too mellow to really freak out, or at least currently. After all, Ousmane and Emre had their own weird ambiguous thing that they thought nobody'd noticed. So he just shuts his eyes and drifts off to sleep, aided by Felix absentmindedly running hands through his hair.

When he wakes up he has a serious case of cottonmouth and the munchies. Everyone looks thoroughly tired still, and Christian decides that he's going to stick to smoking sativa. All remains normal until he gets home a few hours later.

His mother asks him about his day at dinner, and Christian happily supplies her with information on the entire event. 'It's like a barmitzvah, but not jewish,' was the best explanation. In fact, the rest of the evening goes very well, with them playing board games and making abstract discussion. It's not until he is alone the next day that the real trouble starts.

He likes Felix. Of course he fucking likes him. Logic only dictated that that would be the obvious conclusion of their friendship. That was Christian's luck. But Felix wasn't just his friend, or just his crush; he was his damn business partner. They sold together. This was more than just some schoolboy drama shit, his friends sold drugs. He sold drugs.

"What the fuck am I doing with my life?" He wails, flopping onto the bed. Christian didn't like being dramatic in public, but alone in his own room, it was completely different.

He could see it now: Felix would somehow find out, reject him and then when they got into the next confrontation with someone dangerous (it was not a what if, but a when will), thrust him into it as a scapegoat. He'd get beaten up, convicted of his crimes, go to jail. If he made it out of there, he'd end up being one of those guys who gave those speeches to high school gymnasiums full of bored teens about not doing drugs.

As his heart beat accelerated, Christian realized that he shouldn't panic. A few minutes of failed controlled breathing later told him that this wasn't going to work. Contemplating over what to do in his panicked state, Christian reached under his bed. He'd taken a few xanax from their stash at some point. He chewed it, wincing at the taste, because that made it work faster.

Maybe fifteen minutes later he decided to call Ousmane. Though their group had no leader, Ous was the oldest and therefore deemed to be the best advice giver by Christian's xanax soothed brain.

"What happened?" Ous asks instead of giving Christian a customary hello.

Christian doesn't think, just releases a slightly panicked "How did you know?"

"Know what?"

Now he furrows his brow. "I know you know, I could tell by how you answered the phone, Ousmane."

Ousmane crawls out of bed, beginning his usual pace around his room. He knew that shit was about to go down. "You're gonna have to fill me in here."

Inversely, Christian plants himself into the beanbag chair in his room. Night had fallen; his parents watching tv downstairs before they went to sleep. Taking a shaky breath, he began to speak again. "It's Felix."

"What happened to him?! Christian you gotta-- fuck... I, it's not him, huh?" Ousmane says erratically, standing still now on the hardwood floor of his bedroom, shirtless in his pajama pants.

Through the rushed and cluttered sentence that Ousmane had delivered, Christian found some sense. He nods, then realizes that Ousmane can't see that, so he settles for a strangled "Mhm." He can't wait for it to kick in completely.

Ousmane nods on his side of the line, eliciting a giggle from Emre, still sitting on his bed. "Fuck, dude," he exits to his balcony for privacy, "you like him? I didn't even know you swing that way."

"Uh, yeah. Only swing that way. Girls aren't really my thing." Christian says with some finality. He winces, waits for Ousmane to say something friendship ending.

"Bruh, why didn't you tell us earlier? We would've stopped trying to get you to get with some girls."

Christian's mind quickly provides a series of his newfound friends' attempts at getting him to hook up. The xanax does a little to soothe the stress of it all. For a moment he contemplates taking another, but quickly realizes what a dumb idea that is.

Ousmane rapidly supplies more dialogue. "Have you talked to him about it?"

"Oh yeah, great idea Ousmane. I'll just call him up and go 'oh hey Felix, I know it's late and that I'm barred out, but I'm gay and I like you. How's your day been?'" Christian says, feeling less mellow than expected. Of course, after he says this, the bar finally completely kicks in, and life becomes subdued and more apathetic.

He can hear not only Ousmane's laughter, but someone else's muffled chuckles from inside Ousmane's apartment. Ousmane shakes his head. "Okay. Maybe you're not ready. But you gotta tell him at some point."

"Okay. I know. I just-- I'd like to know if there's even a chance that it's mutual before I say anything." Christian says, feeling calmer by the minute. Ousmane's words do make sense.

Ousmane looks at Emre through his window like his shorter friend held all the secrets. Emre waved at him. Ousmane waved back. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

Again, the lanky teenager nodded, like Christian was right there. "I dunno, I never really talked about that shit with Felix. I mean like, his mom's gay so maybe he is? Good luck."

Before Christian can say anything he hangs up and walks back into his bedroom. Emre has only tangled up his bedsheets more in the time he was out of the room. Smiling at Ousmane, he pats the spot on the bed next to him. "What was that all about?"

Respecting his friend's privacy, Ousmane goes for the simple "Friend's going through some stuff."

Emre laughed, lying back on the bed. "Well, they sure have you worked up. You're all serious now."

"Worked up? Serious?"

Emre nods, reaching to pull him down too, thumb slipping into the elastic waistband of his pajama pants. "Don't worry about it. You look hot when you're serious."

Ousmane laughs, tumbling down next to the shorter teenager. "Oh my god, you're ridiculous." He doesn't seem to mind what Emre's doing though.

Christian sighs, now off the phone. He has all of next week to reflect over everything, as his family is going to the beach. It's weird not being with his friends, just his parents, but the weather is nice and the waves are big enough. There's absolutely zero service and he feels so alone, more so than when he was a new kid in town, before he met three loko and completed the musketeer set.

Aside from the lack of wifi or cellular abilities, Christian is also without weed, or anything else intoxicating for that matter. He's sober all the time, and that leads to some revelations of its own. He can remember his dreams. He stops forgetting where he left his phone. His thoughts are a little clearer. He wonders if it'd be better to take a break from all the drugs. It's futile; he knows that the second he reenters town there will be Felix, Emre and Ousmane with blunts and beers ready to celebrate his return.

On another beach, miles and miles away, are Emre and Felix's families. Felix's mother may have been a lesbian professor of Jewish history, but she also got along very well with Emre's "traditionalist" family. They'd been going to the beach together for years at this point. Felix and Emre spent their days smoking and surfing; a teenager's view of paradise. There wasn't much more that they wished for here in the southernmost beach of the state, roomed cozily in two twin beach houses overlooking a bay. Even the water was crystal clear!

This morning the sun is coloring the ocean bronze and crimson, rising deep into the early hours. To the west, the sky is still looking like nighttime. The east is a watercolor painting. Felix and Emre walk along the shore, boards in arms and wind in their hair. This is wonderful, it all is, but something feels missing. It tugs at Felix's chest.

Emre, with his usual talent of near telepathic empathy, cocks his head to one side. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Felix says, absentmindedly pulling at a loose string hanging off of his swim trunks. "Feels like something's not right."

More slight head motions ensue, like Emre is bending the antennae on a radio to pick up the frequency better, but instead of radio channels it's Felix's innermost thoughts. "Homesick?" A pause, then "or do you just miss our bros?"

Felix stops his walking. The sand here is soft and wet. He experimentally flexes his toes as they're enveloped. Emre, behind him, nods. No wifi, no service out here in the shore. Just water and sand. He knows that there's no point to answering this question either, because their friends were family and home. To miss home would be to miss their bros and to miss their bros would be to miss home. Still, he presses on with his interrogation.

"So you do miss them? You have a heart now?"

Felix rolls his eyes at Emre's chuckling. Already he is moving out into the water. "Stop making me out to be a heartless cunt, Emre. I have feelings, I just generally ignore them."

The water reaches up near their calves now. Emre grants him a moment silent and free of his chatter. They drink the entire sight in. The waves ripple. The wind bellows. The tide pulls. He thinks that this must be how his family felt when they prayed to their gods, awed by the majesty of the religion itself, carved idols and dances done by tawny skinned ancestors around brush fires spanning centuries but not really changing. It was a wonderful sense of beauty.

So of course, now would be the time to break that. "Fifty bucks says you like Christian."

"You're an asshole." Felix spits the salt out of his mouth. It's everywhere, they don't have to do anything for it to get in their eyes or noses or mouths.

"Didn't deny it."

"Didn't confirm it either."

Ocean water slides up far higher. "Care to say anything more before I tell Ous?"

"Just because you're gay for one of your best friends doesn't mean I am." Felix tells him.

A day later, as they sunscreen up on the deck, Emre tells him quietly that Christian said he was gay. Felix doesn't ask how he knew or if it was true. In fact, he's careful to not bring up Christian at all for the rest of the trip. He doesn't want to give off a certain image. But Christian is with him for the rest of his stay at the beach, his face in the back of his mind. It stays in his thoughts though, buried deep like his feet in the sand.

Far away in France, Ousmane kicks his legs freely in one of the tall chairs that stay in his grand-mère's house. His grand-mère was different from grandma in the states, who was seemingly older than time itself and from somewhere far enough into Africa to scare snooty white people. No, instead this grandmother, grand-mère, was French and wore her hair relaxed and in a bun. Around her he had to remember his pas problèmes and s'il vous plaîts.

In France, surrounded by a different set of cousins, Ousmane didn't get to be Ous, the skateboarding, drug dealing church skipper. Instead he was votre cousin Dembélé, jeune monsieur and upstanding young boy. He couldn't talk about Felix or Emre or Christian, but especially Emre. According to his little sister his face looks a certain way when he mentioned Emre and Ousmane didn't know how to stop it. Instead he talks about the good grades he gets and the colleges he plans on applying to soon.

But in France he can legally drink, so that he does with all of his cousins old enough to. It's all great fun, sipping bubbly wines that would probably cost twenty times more back home in America. He's not a lightweight by any means but one night he downs more than he should and ends up waiting until two am so he could call Emre (he knew the time zones would matter) and warbles over the line to him wretchedly. In retrospect he sounds like a pitiful boyfriend more than a best friend, but alcohol removes inhibitions as well as self awareness.

Ousmane likes getting drunk, but he hates being shameful and surely that's all he'll feel when he's sober again as he talks to Emre for what feels like hours. He's always been bad with his emotions, eternally the businessman of their group for a reason (though really, Felix was almost certainly more heartless than him), but it's easy to talk to Emre, can practically see his little headbobbles and hand motions.

"Fuck, I miss you. And the guys. But you, a lot," he says even though he's probably said some version of that at least fifteen times over. He definitely had, gauging by how Emre cackles.

It takes a while for Emre to drown out his own laughter and be able to talk. "You know Felix is here right? If he heard you--" more laughter, unbridled. Ousmane laughs too. "I feel the same way too, you know that, but you should get sleep. It's late there, isn't it?"

Ousmane pouts, drunkenly sprawled out on the carpet of his cousin's bedroom where he was staying. "How's he doing? And Christian?"

Emre shakes his head. Of course Ousmsne would find a way to wring out another five minutes of talk. "I don't know about Christian, but Felix sure misses him. Go to sleep now."

"He likes him?"

"Just go to sleep Ous. Text me in the morning." Emre says. In the background Ousmsne can faintly hear Felix echo another version of these words.

If it was only one of them who left town then there would be cause for celebration in itself, but everyone has been out of town so it is multiplied. Emre and Felix arrive first, then Christian, and finally Ousmane. As soon as (a jet lagged) Ous rolls into town, the planning begins. Emre's tried buying fakes before, but it just doesn't work when your entire group looks like a pack of fourteen year old boys. Instead they settle for some alcohol and then a trip downtown.

First it's mixed drinks, all tossed together by Ousmane, which really just means that it's Dr Pepper and tequila mixed. Christian thinks that that would taste like shit, but after he takes a sip of Emre's he's hooked. Any fear he has of interacting with Felix, of somehow blowing it and saying something friendship ruining leaves his body after a few drinks. Doing shots only loosens him up more. There's no time to worry when he drunkenly pressed up to Felix as they try to play scrabble in their own scrabbled state. As an added bonus someone made clubs out of paper and duct tape, so they'd been hitting each other over the head as they hastily formed only vaguely coherent words.

Emre thwacks Christian over the head particularly hard and Felix whacks Emre back with twice the force. This means that Ousmsne hits Felix in retaliation, and it devolves into silly blows over the head. It goes on for what feels like eternity, until someone suggests that now they should go downtown.

Emre leaves to fix his hair and Ousmane goes into another room to grab his hat, and this leaves Christian and Felix piled up on the couch, mask off blaring from Emre's portable speaker set that he brings everywhere. Felix hooks his arm around Christian to keep him close, and Christian lols his head onto Felix's chest. He can feel the rise and fall, hear his breath and how Felix's chin occasionally skims the top of his hair. It's really, really nice. Honestly, when he pictures heaven it's a little like this, cuddling with Felix.

"Lovebirds, we're going." Emre says, waltzing out with the usual pep in his step. Ousmane is only a pace behind, grinning and already reaching for his phone to snap a photo.

Felix rolls his eyes, but doesn't try to stop him, so Christian represses the urge to snatch the phone and delete whatever pictures he'd taken. Instead, he lets the blonde pull him up off the couch and out the door, hand always on his wrist. It's nice. The hold lingers slightly in the bus ride, Christian eventually looking up from Felix's hand to Felix's face.

Felix beams at him and Christian can feel his heart flutter.

Luckily, Ousmane and Emre don't even notice, too busy wrapped up in something on Ous's phone. Emre laughs down at the screen approximately every two seconds, a firm hand on top of Ousmane's thigh. Felix stares at them for a moment and chuckles softly. Christian accompanies him, laughing like its some inside joke. In a way, it is.

"Have they always been like that?" He asks Felix.

Small shrug. "I don't think so, but sorta? They've always been close."

For a moment, sitting down, Christian feels sober. There are lights glimmering past them via the bus windows, and Felix swings his legs in his seat to a rhythm that is familiar. That feeling ends when they get up and off at their stop. Standing and sitting while drunk are two different experiences, and the transition is one that Christian isn't so sure that he can handle.

"I think I'm gonna puke."

Emre winces. "If you're gonna vomit, just don't do it anywhere near me. I'll throw up right back on you."

"Strong gag reflex." Ousmane provides, unhelpfully.

Felix, in a rather unexpected showing of compassion and empathy, rubs Christian's shoulders. "Just puke on the homeless. They're already covered in it."

Christian nods feebly despite protests from everyone around him. He's still determined to hold it down, which he does manage to maintain as they walk along the street. There are plenty of bars and clubs on the street, occasionally interrupted by a strip club. He's sure that they're looking for someone, or somewhere, but he can't be fucked to actually figure out who or what it is. In fact, their specific location only reveals itself when they stop walking.

The place that they're about to enter is named Bobby Wood's Drink Shack (a name so shitty that they couldn't help but laugh at it) and the owner, presumably Bobby Wood himself, comes out to meet them. He's an incredibly gregarious Asian man with a buzzed head. "Don't you boys look a little too young to be going to a bar?"

"I use a lot of sunscreen," Emre says, like that is an explanation for why a barely seventeen year old boy is trying to enter a bar. The owner doesn't buy that extra spf has kept this of age gentleman looking that young.

"We have babyfaces?" Christian offers. Bobby Wood laughs.

He shakes his head "Nice try."

Felix narrows his eyes, sober enough to logic through this. "Oh come on man, we all know you don't ID. Just let us in."

The owner rolls his eyes, but they get in all the same. The bar is about as good as its name; that is to say that it is more off the highway shack than dive bar. No one other than Christian seems to notice though, as they slip through crowds of people to get to the drinks. Ousmane sweet talks the bar tender, clearly new and inexperienced ("And therefore weak," Ousmane would say later) into giving him a bottle of ciroc. She smiles at him awkwardly as he leaves.

They drink straight from the bottle like how Christian'd seen in movies. Felix laughs at his naiveness. To think that one of their bros, someone who helped them deal, had never drank vodka like this. Emre shakes his head. "We're like the Harlem globetrotters of underage drinking!"

Everyone laughs and drinks and agrees, dancing with the people around them. Ousmane and Emre pull out their dorkiest moves while Felix tries to get Christian to actually move his feet. Finally he does, and they dance together. Alcohol is a wonderful social lubricant, and he feels uninhibited enough to try to grind with Felix. The last time he felt this great was when he was on molly.

Felix has absolutely no memory of how they got to the restroom, but in what seems to be nanoseconds Christian's slammed him up against the bathroom wall in a desperate attempt at every teen movie's steamy make out scene. Felix had done this with plenty of people before (albeit only girls) and in restrooms before (admittedly mostly non public ones) and while intoxicated (usually only while intoxicated) but it was usually a little more enjoyable. That was probably because the doorstop was digging into his back.

He must've made a sound of pain or discomfort because Christian pulls away, frowns, and asks him what is wrong. Felix takes this as his chance to peel away from the wall and instead shove Christian against it. Christian rolls his eyes but does not protest. Felix takes this as a sign of consent.

At some point into things, he can hear someone tsk at them. Felix pulls away from Christian to tell them that they were homophobic cunts and should let him make out with whoever he pleases in a restroom, but he doesn't even get halfway through 'this is a public restroom' before they start talking.

While Christian wallows in a state of confusion, Felix can easily recognize the first guy as Eric Durm from his health class, and the other boy is vaguely familiar, although from another high school (he wants to say his name is Muller, but he's not sure). Eric was nice, and currently rolling a blunt, which only improved Felix's mental standings of him. Christian narrows his eyes at the apparent stranger.

"Yo, if you stop making out we'll share." Eric says.

"We have like a dime bag. All for you, if you stop." Thomas adds.

Felix looks at Christian, who looks disappointed. He weighs it out in his head: free weed or kissing in the bathroom? At least I know where my priorities lie, he thinks as he rolls the contents of the baggie in a cigarillo skin.

"Want some?" He asks Christian.

The brunette shakes his head. "I think I'm good. I don't know those guys."

Now exiting the bar, Thomas glances over at Eric with a deal of worry. "Dude, we shouldn't've given them that. We don't even know what's in it."

Eric laughs, though not entirely reassuring. "C'mon man, it's from Götze, it's not like it's K2 or anything. Totally worth it to save me from that mental image."

"Yeah, but he didn't even know what was in it. I'm not gonna feel sorry for them, but you can't pin this on me."

They were already far away from the bar by the time Christian would think to blame them. It had started out normal enough, and he'd almost taken a hit, but now he's glad he doesn't. It had smelled like weed at first, but with undertones of something else, and then those undertones became chemical overtones and now Felix was bent over a toilet dry heaving and shuddering.

"You dumbass," Christian says, more out of fear than anger "that was K2. How couldn't you tell?"

"I--" Felix hacks "can't--" more coughing "smell."

Christian forces back a pitiful laugh at the fact that Felix's olfactory senses had failed him as he slides down the wall again, rubbing Felix's back. He's tempted to google the situation, but fears what he'd find. No one died from smoking K2, right? "Okay, you need to stop coughing, that's not going to help. Breath steady."

Felix pulls his head away from the toilet weakly and flops against the stall wall. He shakes his head. "Feels like I can't breath."

Last year Christian was a lifeguard. He'd only saved one person ever the entire year, but he remembers the breathing exercises. He shuffles closer to Felix. "Okay, listen to me." Felix nods. "Do what I do. Breath with me."

Breath in for five seconds. Hold for five seconds. Exhale for five seconds. Repeat. Christian feels calmer by the second. He thinks it's working until he realizes that Felix's face hasn't lost any of its pallor and there are rings darkening around his eyes. He tries another exercise.

"Feel any better?"

"No."

Felix only looks worse. Christian feels some guilt towards letting him smoke. Sure, it was probably bound to happen with Felix's risk taking habits, but he still felt horrible about it. He wonders what to do. "How do you feel?"

Felix's head feels like it's swimming, and it's like the world is lagging. He can't seem to breath right, and he gets the feeling that he's dying, which isn't a particularly good one. The words that he wants to say won't come out. He already can feel himself begin to panic, and now his heart pounds double time. He can feel his pulse everywhere, from his feet to his skull. "I think I'm dying."

And now that's really what it feels like. Being cognitive becomes a thousand times harder. The world is cold. He shudders. Christian wraps his arms around him in a feeble attempt to warm him up.

"You're not gonna die, okay?" Christian says, looking more concerned than before. He knows he needs to get Emre and Ousmane's help, but he doesn't want to leave. His phone is dead. "Alright, I'm gonna be back in a minute. I'm going to get the guys."

Felix nods, trying to remember what Christian had said about breathing. In and out. Five. He can't count the number of breaths he takes but he can count how long he holds them for. In for five. Hold for five. Out for five. Over and over again until Christian returns.

Christian comes back after what seems like eons of timed breaths. Ousmane and Emre are there too. If he didn't feel like he was about to pass out of barf out a lung he'd offer them a greeting. Emre's eyes are on him. He can feel it. So are Ousmane's and Christian's but they aren't intense like his childhood friend's.

"Fuck. This is bad." Someone says. Felix isn't sure who. It could be someone he didn't know for all he could tell.

Other voices respond to it, and they carry out a conversation just like that. Even though they're only a few feet away, Felix can't tell what they're saying. He can hear the sounds, but it's like he's deep, deep underwater, so he can't make out the words. Even the sensation of drowning was there. Maybe he actually was ten feet under the surface. He could almost feel the current.

Suddenly there are hands on his shoulders and he's getting picked up. It's Christian, thankfully. Felix has decided that Christian is his favorite human being. The brunet gives him instructions. Get up. Walk. Roman is here. Go into his car. After that he doesn't have a clue.

Roman's car is massive. It's a land yacht esque mini van. Ousmane and Emre take up the furthest seats in the back ("no fooling around, we promise," they were forced to say). Christian and Felix took up the middle. Roman drove, and his ever present significant other, Marc, sat shotgun.

"Christ man, you want me to take him to the hospital?" Roman says as he watches the teenagers push a boneless Felix into a seat. "He looks like shit."

"I feel like shit." Felix groans back, responsive for once. Christian giggles slightly, wrapping an arm around the blonde.

"Yeah, I'm afraid we're gonna pass on that. We're gonna take him to my place." Emre says, already typing his address into google maps on Roman's phone.

Marc raises a brow. "You sure about that? He seriously looks like he's dying." He pokes Felix, wanting to make sure that he was actually still alive. Felix makes a tiny noise. Alive.

Ousmane nods. "Emre's grandparents are healers." He sounds exceptionally proud of them, like they were his own relatives.

"They live in a yurt." Christian adds, like that improves their reputability (it doesn't). At least a newfound sobriety is letting him think.

When ones pictures a yurt, they imagine a ramshackle kind of thing, or at least all of Emre's friends did. However, in reality the yurt was an upstanding combination of tent, house and gazebo. Emre's grandma sits inside, tiny and wrinkled in a blue nightgown. The glowing screen of an iPhone in her hand looks out of place here. It reminds Marc of his own grandmother, a bruja. It creeps Roman out. He pulls Marc away and back into the car as quickly as possible.

The grandmother places a leathery hand on Felix's forehead. He feels feverish. She frowns, tutting in a language that is certainly not English. The only current reassuring thing happening is her lack of panic.

Grandma Mor asks Emre something in the same language and he responds in bits and pieces of the same tongue. He's not fluent, that much is obvious, but Christian is jealous anyhow of his bilingual abilities. "I just said he is very sick," he says to Ousmane and Christian afterwards.

Emre hopes dearly that Felix is okay. He's known him since elementary school, known him before four loko, when it was just them two. It's still easy to conjure up an image of nine year old Felix, even when the seventeen year old one lies feet away from him sprawled out on the ground of his grandmother's house.

He watches as his grandmother does a few chants, lights her incense and candles and grinds up herbs. She makes Felix eat them. Moments later Felix moves out of the yurt to vomit. Ousmane winces. Emre gags. He's always been a sympathy vomiter.

But her cure works, or at least works well enough to have his longtime friend snoozing a half hour later while Ousmane and Christian creep with him into the house. No one feels drunk anymore, not now after such an incident.

They eat the baklava stored in the fridge along with the chips and salsa from his pantry. The rest of the food in his house grosses his friends out. No one is in a good mood now, not with Felix sleeping like the dead in the yurt in Emre's backyard. He knows they've brushed close with shit like this before: doing the wrong drugs or doing too much, but it's never been as serious as this. Maybe they'd been going too hard as of late. He looks over to Ousmane for comfort like he does so often, but only finds him to be equally depressed and anxious.

Christian is only worse. Emre wishes he was better with his feelings so he could help, but he had never been the mature one in the group. Instead, he suggests they all go to sleep.

Things are better in the morning. Everyone is hungover, including Felix, but other than that their friend was doing good. Christian hugs him until Felix squeaks like a dog toy.

"I think you're killing me," the blonde rasps.

Ousmane shakes his head. "You asshole, you nearly did that yourself."

Emre nods. Felix frowns. "We all make mistakes sometimes. I just happened to smoke k2. It happens to the best of us."

Everyone stays on edge for a while though. They all smoke less, though that does help business. Being sober more often eventually leads Christian to the realization that it is August, and that school and more scarily, college applications are looming. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and he's not ready to go back to school. He's had too much fun this summer to want anything else.

This means that he's the first to get back to smoking, which pulls everyone else in, first by Felix, who spends even more time with him, if that was possible, and then Emre and Ousmane. If he thinks hard about it, he's with Felix more often than he was with his parents, or even Ousmane and Emre (who do their own thing separately sometimes, though their own thing generally involves things that Christian would rather not see anyways). Felix is great company, whether it be during a deal or making out on the couch or watching friends reruns. Any way is good.

Or at least, everything is good until the last week or two of summer. Tranquility fades. There's a massive party rising in the distance, one held at Sven's trap house, which means nothing good. Sven's parties usually end in catastrophe. Ousmane knows they do. It's not like he has a sixth sense predicting danger or anything, but when it comes to the people he’s close to, he always knows when they’re about to do something that could result in actual jail time.

The first warning sign comes when Raph meets up with them. He's already faded, unsurprisingly. "Suh?"

Ousmane shakes his head. "Christ, you're already gone."

"Absolutely Steven Hawking'd." Felix adds.

Raph sticks with them as they drink. His commentary is nonsensical, when it is actually words. Mostly it's just slurred syllables. Emre joins him quickly, downing drinks faster than anybody else. He goes on an extended spiel about how he was really just a plant in disguise.

"Watch your boyfriend, Ous," Felix hisses at him eventually, moving towards where the alcohol was again.

Ousmane can feel his heart fall through to his stomach. "He's not my boyfriend."

Felix starts laughing at this. "Not your boyfriend? Bullshit. I know y'all. Just make sure he doesn't do anything too stupid." He turns to Christian, holding a can of tomato juice. "Bloody Mary?"

Christian wrinkles his nose. "I'm gonna say no. Not a fan of tomatoes. They're my least favorite fruit."

Raph nods like he is a part of this conversation. Then, with pseudo thoughtfulness, he says "If tomato is a fruit, is pasta sauce a juicy?"

At this moment they decide to abandon Raph.

Unfortunately, Emre's life had a tendency to go towards the ironic. Fast forward to the end of the night, and he is nowhere to be seen. Emre never disappears like this, at least not without Ousmane, but Ousmane isn't with him. If the lanky teen wasn't already worried for him, he was catatonic with it now. It's enough to pull Christian and Felix out of whatever gay shit they were doing to help them find him.

"Fuck, dude. We kinda figured you went off with him." Felix says. Christian nods, still a little embarrassed.

"Help me find him, you cunts! He could be dead for all we know!" Ousmane exclaims, hearing the panic in his own voice.

They decide to stick together to find him, partially because Ousmane didn't want to lose anyone else, but also because he was sure that if he let Christian and Felix go by themselves that they'd get distracted. Being crossfaded wasn't helping his hunt.

Eventually they find Emre passed out on a couch, face down. His chest doesn't move much. Christian winces at the sight. "He looks like he got hit by a truck."

"Yeah, I think he went a little too hard." Felix says, bending down to slap an unresponsive Emre. This seems to deeply unsettle him. "Shit man, I think he has alcohol poisoning."

This is what makes Ousmane actually lose it. He rushes forward to shake Emre like one would a limp rag doll. He waits for a response, but it never comes. Even though it feels like there is something stuck in his throat, he pushes it aside to talk. "Fuck! Call 911."

"Call 911?! Are you fucking crazy? Do you know how many people would get arrested?"

"Couldn't we just take him to his grandma? She knows how to cure pretty much anything."

Ousmane begins to push Emre upright. He shakes his head defiantly. "Fuck no. We need to get him actual help. Let's just walk him over a block and then call 911. No one gets busted."

It takes an unprecedented amount of time to get Emre out of the house, especially considering that he lapses between being almost conscious and not there at all. Every minute passed makes Ousmane worry more. He cares for Emre so much. The fear of any serious harm befalling him gives him the energy to push the shorter teenager all the way two blocks down the street to the park.

Christian and Felix sit Emre down and try to steady him as Ousmane calls for help. Ousmane doesn't think any of them had called an ambulance before, and fears that it may be unnecessary, but he'd rather that they be safe than sorry.

"Doesn't he need to puke?" Christian asks. "Y'know, so he can get the alcohol out."

"Uhh," is all Ousmane can say, concern eating away at his thoughts.

He should've said something though, because Felix then pulls back and swings a fist into Emre's stomach. The tan boy groaned, leaning forwards and puking up some (presumably alcoholic) liquid. Ousmane gags, but still reaches for his phone to call an ambulance. He'll let Christian and Felix deal with Emre for now.

The lady who talks to him, or really deals with him, to be more accurate, is kind. She doesn't seem to notice the small slur in Ousmane's words, or if she does she attributes it more to fear than alcohol. She tells him that Emre should be fine, and a myriad of other reassuring things. Her final gift to him is a time. Two minutes, thirty seconds. That is how long it'll take for the ambulance to arrive.

Two twenty nine. Two twenty seven. Two twenty six-- or was that seven? His sense of time if normally bad, but only worse now. He can't seem to count or focus, maybe because of the alcohol or the deep lying panic or the fact that behind him Felix is shaking Emre above the ground.

"What are you doing?!" He asks when the words finally come to him.

Felix looks at him like he is a dumbass. "Making sure he doesn't choke."

Suddenly, a third voice chimes in. "I'm afraid that isn't your job."

How none of the three noticed the ambulance was a mystery that remained forever unsolved, considering with the siren and the lights, but the ambulance intel seemed to be used to the situation. Ousmane watches them pick up Emre with a professional ease and lower him gently into a stretcher. This is a sight none of them ever thought they'd see. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

"Can I go with you?" Ousmane asks. He thinks that if he looks sad enough that the medics will take pity on him and let him go. Sure, the things they'll do to Emre to fix him will probably be very disgusting, but Ousmane doesn't care. He wants to be with him.

Unfortunately, puppy dog eyes don't get you that far with hardened professionals. "Hell no," the head medic says to him, already turning her back.

Of course, it is just their luck that Emre is fine in the end. His stomach is pumped, he is given a serious warning and a flyer to the local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but he comes out of the hospital the next day alive and mostly alright.

"We should celebrate." He tells Ousmane in the car.

Ousmane grins. He'd try to be seductive now, but he's too joyful for that. "How so?"

Emre doesn't mean in like how Ousmane thought he would. "Champagne, obviously," and breaks into laughter. "I'm kidding. Whatever you want, I'm down for. You know that."

Ousmane can't help but grin. The words that he wants to say are not the words that he can find. There were a million things he could say; I'm glad you're back, I missed you, I wanna sleep with you, but he remains silent. No eye contact either. He'll settle for beaming and staring down at his feet in the car.

Emre leans as close to him as the seats of the car will allow. He smells like a hospital. "I love you too."

Ousmane fist pumps, but it hits the horn. It blares, making the lady parked two spaces away jump in her seat. He'd apologize to her but he's too caught up in trying to play it cool. "Yeah, I love you," he pauses "You don't have to get all gay with it, though."

Emre laughs. "You know you want to, bro. We've been getting gay with it for a while. You don't gotta act emotionally retarded like how Felix and Christian do."

"Christ, do you always have to bring up our friends when it gets romantic?"

Emre shuts him up pretty quickly.

Felix, on the other hand, knows Christian's been wary of nearly everything since Emre's visit to the emergency room. It bothers him that his friend has been like that, but he won't let it show. He has appearances to keep up. Instead of talking to Christian, he just reminds himself that there could be a million reasons for why Christian has been acting the way he has been. Talking isn't what Felix does.

School is probably why, he decides. It starts only days away. It's better to think of that as the stressor than himself or his friends. And truth be told, school was freaking Christian out some. He was the new kid senior year, like something straight out of a coming of age movie. Of course he had the advantage of coming in with a close group of friends, and knowing many other students from parties, but there were so many others that he hadn't met yet. They came with their own unique problems. Would they judge him for who he hung out with, who he was or what he did?

The only people he knew with from school aside from four loko were all the kind of people who would go on to do absolutely nothing in life. There were a million examples of this, Raph being the poster boy for it. Christian didn't want to end up saying shit like "fat yuh." He wanted to go to college and get a degree and a job and a family and a mortgage, even though he'd been slacking in the college application department. Now school started tomorrow. He was behind and in a little too deep into his own world.

But in the end, knowing Felix and Ousmane and Emre is a definite, unsurprising plus. He has someone to eat with, people who look out for him, a group to belong to. People who he's never even seen before know who he is because of them. It's like skipping the 'I'm the new kid' portion of the year and Christian is unbelievably grateful for it.

He doesn't go around telling absolutely everyone where his alliances lie, though. He hears his table mates Marcel and Andre talk bad about Emre the first day of Government class, and is therefore certain to avoid mentioning his friends to them. In this class his identity is under wraps, or under wraps until word on who he is becomes inescapable. It was like a time bomb that he knew would go off at some point, but not when.

So with Marcel and Andre and their less uptight other table mate, Gonzalo, he talks about college plans and classwork instead of his friends and rather questionable extra curricular activities. He prays that they don't find out.

In a way, it's nice to be free of this reputation that people have cultivated for him, Christian Pulisic: longboarder, party goer and drug dealer. He'd never define himself by these terms, but he seems to have gained them simply by being around four loko. With these unknowing classmates he is an intelligent peer and teammate. They may not be the kindest, but a break from the usual topics of discussion is massively appreciated.

He wonders if that's why he begins to worry about his life decisions. He'd fretted before, but now with the stress of school and applying to colleges he viewed it all in a different light. Surely what they were doing was morally wrong, or at least frowned upon. Christian knows that his parents would be ashamed. They didn't raise him this way. He feels a pang of guilt whenever they pull off a good deal.

"That shit ain't subtle," Emre tells Felix. He's seen everything play out, watching like how he always did.

Felix frowns, tapping his foot on the ground incessantly. They were camped out in Mr Reus's room like they often did during school. "And you want me to do something about it?"

"Of course! He's all depressed and shit because of you."

Felix nearly gasps. "Because of me? The fuck did I do?"

Emre chuckles like he knows what he was talking about. "More like what you didn't do. You gotta talk about your feelings, bro. It works if you work it."

Felix ponders over this. He didn't know that Emre was blaming their friend's sadness on the wrong reason, and (unfortunately for his own sense of pride) Emre seemed to be correct. "Why the fuck are you always right?" He pauses and adds "Was that from AA?"

Emre winks. Before he can say anything, Ousmane strolls into the room, slinging an arm around Emre. From his desk Mr Reus rolls his eyes. "Without knowing anything, I'm siding with Emre. He's generally right." Emre beams at him.

"You guys are legitimately disgusting." Felix says. From the corner of his eyes he sees Mr Reus nod strongly.

Unfortunately, this is the point where Mr Reus decides to chip in his two cents. He'd been present for the entire conversation, listening. It was hard not too. One of the pros of being a high school teacher was getting to listen to all of the ridiculous gossip. Felix's friend group's was an office favorite. "I don't mean to be eavesdropping, but it is good to talk about your feelings, Felix."

"Oh come on, for fuck's sake. It feels like all of you are after me," Felix groans, pulling himself off of the desk he was sitting on and leaving. There were only a few minutes left in this period anyways.

He pops into Christian's classroom with a pink slip in hand. He'd picked it up from a recycling bin on his way here, and it was just what he needed to get Christian out of class early. No one ever read what was on the slip anyway. One wave at Mrs Weigel and Christian was dismissed early. He smiles at the taller boy as they walk off campus.

"So, uh, what's up with you taking me out of class?" Christian asks with the slightest bit of nerves. Usually when this happened they'd meet up with Emre and Ous or Raph or even sometimes Shinji, but never was it alone.

"I-- uh," Felix scratches the back of his head nervously "We need to talk."

Both teenagers felt the awkward tension. Christian didn't know what to expect. This was out of character for Felix. Felix, on the other hand, felt equally nervous, but only because he hated doing this. He had a distinct lack of affinity for anything emotion related.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Felix echoes, then sighs. He can't let himself get too worked up. "Alright. Look, I, uh, get that I've been tormenting you for a while or whatever, but, but I, uh.... Look, okay, I get that you like me and it's hard to say this but I like you too. It sounds really dumb and gay and I'm shit at relationships but I do. Fuck, I know that you wanted us to talk about it, and this is really shit, but I hope that I got everything out there."

Christian is quiet for a moment, absorbing the information from the rambling speech of his blonde counterpart. Eventually, he smiles. Mutual. Great. "Wow, uh, I didn't expect that. I like you and, uh, I'm glad you like me too." He pauses for a moment "But that's not what's been bothering me. I really appreciate the honesty, but this whole, uh, drug dealing thing is what's been bothering me."

Felix arches a brow. "How so?"

Christian tries his best to think. It is hard to put how he feels into words. He prays that he can explain what he's been thinking. "It's just that this is way more serious than I thought it was and I didn't know what I was getting into. I just wanted friends, and now we're doing shit that could make us felons! I feel like you guys have pushed me out of my depth."

"This is serious! Right here is enough money to pay off anyone's college debt. And I didn't pressure you to do shit. I didn't make you sell. You wanted to. Don't try to fucking offend me now."

Christian could feel his pulse quicken. "This isn't about you, Felix. It's about how I feel."

Felix stomps a leaf in aimlessly directed anger. "And now we're at the real issue. It's not always about you. This is a business between the four of us. You always make shit about you."

"Are you calling me self centered?"

"No, I'm just calling you a cunt! I put myself out here for you and you just ignore me and talk some shit. You know how hard it is for me to talk about myself like this?"

Christian narrows his eyes. "Don't call me a cunt! Now how about you fuck off and leave me alone?"

Felix doesn't have the heart to feel guilty at all until the next day. In calculus he feels a pang at his chest. He sighs. Normally he didn't do guilty, especially with anything business related, but this was different. Christian was different. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was.

"You're a dumbass," Emre tells him "you're guilty because you like him. Go apologize."

Ousmane's advice isn't any better. He tells Felix that he should apologize and explain himself, the exact opposite of what Felix wants to hear. His exact words are "Yeah, do what Emre said," but that's what he meant.

Christian gets the same treatment from the two. He puts off talking to Felix though, loses his streak on snapchat with him and doesn't bother texting. He'll see him in a day in AP literature anyways. Maybe it's a bruised sense of pride or the remnants of the world's tiniest grudge, but he doesn't want to be the one to extend the olive branch first.

But it hurts seeing Felix sit across from the room from him and not even bother to look in his direction. They normally sat across the room, but it felt different this time. He counts the minutes until the bell will dismiss them from this class and let them out of school. He wants the day to be over so he can go talk to Felix, but Mr Aubameyang is relentless with his lecture. The minute hand just needs to tick one more time. The seconds stretch.

Finally, after what legitimately seems like eons, the hand moves and the bell rings and Christian leaves his seat. Felix does as well. They can feel Ousmane and Emre's eyes on them from the back of the class. Mr Aubameyang's eyes too. A sea of people editing keeps them parted until the room is near empty. Somehow they manage to converge near perfectly in the middle of the class room.

"I'm sorry," they both say in unison. Both Felix and Christian laugh at that. Christian pulls Felix into a hug. He's pretty sure that he can hear his two friends and the teacher clapping in the mostly vacated room.

Felix opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted. The door swings open with serious force, slamming it into the wall. A few of the school cops pile in. Instantly the teenagers recognize them. In behind is the nicest one at their school, Officer Morris. Unfortunately, the one in front is nowhere near as kind. Emre shudders. Everyone's had a bad experience with Officer Lewandowski.

"Break it up," he orders the two hugging teens. Instantly they do. Even Mr Aubameyang looks worried.

"Uh, Rob-- Officer Lewandowski, what's the issue here?" He asks from his desk. Officer Lewandowski frowns at him, but that easily may have been as it is also the only face he seems capable of making.

"Your students," he says, first pointing at Felix and Christian and then Ousmane and Emre in the back. "have been selling weed. We have good suspicion that they have some on them right now."

Emre breaths a sigh of relief. Weed was far from the worst thing they'd sold. He hopes that neither of the officers noticed that. Another relief was that none of them actually had anything illegal on them at the moment. No one in their group was dumb enough to do that.

"Uh, officer-- sir," Ousmane pipes up. He'd already winced at his teacher's audible gasp-- he really did like Mr Aubameyang "You must have the wrong people. We don't sell anything at all."

The taller, angrier of the two officers glared at him. Everyone resisted the urge to recoil in fear. "Shut up. We've heard from multiple people at school that you four have a bit of a reputation. And not only that, but two students were found today on campus with marijuana that they claimed to have bought from you."

Felix tries his best to put on his puppy dog eyes. Maybe the school cop in front of him had a heart in there somewhere. "Sir, you can check us, we have absolutely nothing. I swear that none of us have anything to do with this, we all are good students--"

"Silence!" Officer Lewandowski shouts. Everyone hops backwards, even Officer Morris. "Lies. We will check all of your bags and pockets, but you all will get arrested, mark my words."

He gets through two backpacks before Officer Morris pipes up. "Uh, Lewandowski, even if you find something in the bags, you can't arrest them. You're only a school officer. We have to turn them in to the actual police."

This spites the officer currently digging through Emre's bag, causing him to grip one side too tightly. It crushes the orange kept in the side pocket. Emre winces. It'll take forever to clean all of it off. Felix tries his hardest to not look smug. The officers will find nothing at all in any of the bags.

Much to Officer Lewandowski's chagrin and four loko's relief, the bags are free of contraband sans a lay's chip bag that he nicks from Christian's backpack. Christian frowns but decides that it is best not to protest this.

"Fuck," Officer Lewandowski hisses under his breath. He sounds disappointed.

Officer Morris smiles at the teenagers. He removes the aforementioned smile when dealing with his fellow cop. "Sir, if you found nothing then there is nothing you can do. We should go."

Officer Lewandowski sighs, recollecting himself. He gives one long last glare at the four adolescents around him, and leaves with a large harrumph. Officer Morris leaves with a wave. The room feels far more empty without them. The air decompresses.

Mr Aubameyang looks at the four students sitting in his classroom and suddenly understands it. Officer Lewandowski was somehow right. He didn't have any concrete evidence, but he'd read enough books to know that in any good story the truth hides, and he figured that this was a good story.

Emre stares back. So does Ousmane and Felix and Christian. Somehow they too know. There's a matching grim expression on each of their faces. He wonders if they're always this stern when it comes to business.

"I won't tell."

That's only a half truth. He confirms for the other officers upon request that Felix, Ousmane, Christian and Emre were all innocent and were in fact good students, not the ones who'd even think about smoking weed, let alone selling it. And later that night, in bed with his fiancé with the lights mostly out and the windows only a little open, he lets out the truth.

Marco doesn't look startled in the least bit. He doesn't even look surprised. Warmly, he wraps his arms around Auba. "You dumbass," he says "I've known for like a year now."

Auba pulls away from the embrace to clearly look Marco in the face. "A year?! You didn't tell me and you knew all this time?"

"I know that you like to come to your own conclusions," Marco says, shrugging amongst the pale sheets on the bed.

Auba is speechless for the moment. He's not sure which is the most surprising: Marco knowing, Marco not telling or the situation itself at hand. "How did you find out?" he eventually says.

"Oh, remember last winter break?" Marco says, smiling. His breath still smells like mint toothpaste, but that might be because of how close Auba was to him. "They went into my car for Uber and just started talking about it. They were really drunk. I figured that the new kid joined them. Interesting bunch, really."

Auba shakes his head. Of course he'd pledged to secrecy. The whole situation has alarmed the students. It had alarmed them to the point where none of the four would even think of fighting. Fear was unifying and deep set. There were tensions still underlying, but they dare not discuss it.

They wouldn't let fear get in the way of their business, but it certainly made them keep a close eye as to how they ran things. They always bought from Papa and never Götze and we're sure never to bring their shit or smoke at all at school. Emre wonders if his teachers noticed that he no longer showed up occasionally high. Ousmane wondered if it was effecting how they all got along.

Eventually Felix is fed up any remnants of awkwardness and makes the journey over to Christian's house. It's a short ride on his longboard, and the autumn winds feel good on his skin. It'd be easy to knock on the front door and ask to come in, but he feels like being a wild card today. He'll climb.

It's not hard to get to Christian's window on the second floor. There's a pecan tree you climb that grows near the house, and then slither up one of the branches that is near Christian's window. The window is screened in, but the brunet had cut a gash in the screen so he could sneak out at night. He'd done it a million times alone this summer.

But Felix can't get in through the window unless Christian opens it. He resorts to throwing pecans at the screen until the taller teen notices. It takes about five. Christian hops up off of his bed and walks towards the window, which he pulls open with a confused expression to see that yes, it really is Felix clinging to a branch lithely outside his window.

Eagerly, Felix climbs in and tumbles to the floor. He hadn't had the experience that Christian does sneaking in and out, and winces as he gets up. Christian starts to laugh.

"You do know I have a front door, right?"

Felix rolls his eyes. "There's no fun in that."

Another laugh. Christian flops back down on his bed to put away whatever was on it. Felix thinks it's homework. Knowing Christian, it almost certainly was. "So what brings you here?"

"Yeah, I," Felix starts, pausing to collect his thoughts. God, he hated talking about himself. "I wanted to apologize, for earlier. Way back. I was mean, but, uh, I don't like talking about how I feel and I, I feel for you? God that didn't come out right. I, I like you. Like, in the gay way."

Christian nods, repressing the urge to chuckle once more. It's not polite. "Oh my god, you came here to say all that?" Nodding. "That's so cheesy! And you think that I'm gonna reject you?"

"Well, uh--"

"I made out with you in a gross-ass dive bar bathroom." Christian says, shaking his head. "Generally people only do that with people they like."

Felix hops onto the bed next to Christian. He smiles. Emre's advice had been true.

"If this was a movie, this is the part where we make out and the happy music plays as it fades to the credits, right?"

**Author's Note:**

> Holy shit this is about 10k longer than I expected it to be but oh well. I think I included like a solid 90% of the 16/17 bvb squad. Hopefully this was enjoyed. Let me know what y'all think in the comments.


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